JASPER DOUTHIT S 

STORY 



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AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



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JASPER 

DOUTHIT'S 

STORY 

The Autobiography of a Pioneer 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

JENKIN LLOYD JONES 





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IvERlTATIS 


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BOSTON 

AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 

25 BEACON STREET 






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A FFECTIONATELY inscribed to rel- 
-ZTjL atives and friends, on earth and 
in heaven, who have been faithfid co- 
workers in the mission of my life; most 
of all to her who was my constant com- 
panion, chief inspiration, oracle and 
guide for nearly f fly years, and to our 
four children, each of whom, from child- 
hood to this day, has had a mind and 
heart to lend a hand. 



FOREWORD 

THIS little book is the simple story of the 
ministry of my dear brother Jasper through 
many years to his own people in his own home 
land. It is what a little maid in a far away old 
time used to ask for, — "a truly story ' ' to the 
last line, and well I can testify that the half has 
not been told. But what he tells me goes right 
to the heart, as it will go to the hearts of the 
thousands who will read it, of our faith and 
name, and the ' ' Lend a Hand Society, ' ' of which 
we are all members in the wider interpretation 
of the happy thought that "joins hands and 
leaves nobody out." 



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INTRODUCTION 

THE story of Jasper L. Douthit, as told by 
himself in these pages, is the story of a 
hard life, spent amid surroundings always sim- 
ple, sometimes rude and rough, but it is the 
story of a life singularly devoted to high 
things, and such a story can never be wholly 
sad. This life was shot through and through 
with consecration, with devoutness, with an al- 
truistic passion to uplift the particular section 
of God's earth into which he was bom, and to 
serve the people to whom he was related. The 
story is necessarily inadequately told, for no 
man can justly estimate his own life or properly 
tell his own story, least of all a man of Mr. 
Douthit's intense temperament, whose seriousness 
has never been sufficiently relieved by a sense of 
humor or freedom from care and the occasional 
recoil from labor which gives the imagination a 
chance to put in its shadings or to cushion the 
ragged rocks with moss and decorate the beet- 
ling cliffs with vines and flowers. 

[ i ] 



INTRODUCTION 



We have here a photograph and not a paint- 
ing. Here is a realism that may mar the ht- 
erary attractiveness of the picture, but which 
greatly enhances its value as the material out of 
which true history must eventually be written. 
iVIr. Douthit appears in these pages as a 
chronicler rather than as an historian. He has 
given us a collection of facts which, superficially 
studied, may seem trifling and sometimes grue- 
some, but deeper study will disclose their value 
as it will reveal high joys and noble convictions. 
We have here a cross-section of a pioneer life 
whose part in the development of the Mississippi 
valley has never been adequately stated. The 
streams of immigration from over New England 
and over the sea — English, Celtic, Scandina- 
vian, German, French, etc. — have been studied 
with such interest and with the help of such 
abundant material as to overshadow that other 
stream which poured out of Virginia and the 
Carolinas through Tennessee and Kentucky into 
southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. 
Douthit, the people to whom he belongs, and the 
counties to whose service he has given his life, 
belong to this stream. He is necessarily a 
"mountain man." In temper, origin and en- 
vironment as well as in appearance, he belongs 

[ " ] 



INTRODUCTION 



to the tribe of Abraham Lincoln. The hard 
drinking, the fiery theology, the vehement prej- 
udices, the bitter quarrels, the deadly feuds and 
withal, the robust intellects and stalwart con- 
sciences which figure in this tale find their coun- 
terpart and explanation in the south and the 
southeastward. 

Mr. Douthit was a *' home missionary," but 
he expounded a foreign gospel. " About the 
last place on earth one would expect to find or 
try to plant a Unitarian church," was the 
common remark of his friends. Unitarianism 
was never put to a severer test than when Jas- 
per Douthit sought with it to ameliorate the 
severities and remove the illiteracy and iniquities 
of southern Illinois in the sixties and the seven- 
ties. Channing's interpretation of the gospel in 
terms of gentleness and love, Theodore Parker's 
interpretation of Christianity in terms of justice 
and freedom to the slave, and Emerson's render- 
ing of the universe in terms of order, progress 
and peace, were by Douthit set over against Cal- 
vinism in its most dogmatic form, the whiskey 
jug with its fiery contents, and the shot gun with 
its maximum of civic potency and political prow- 
ess, and the sequel shows that these higher inter- 
pretations of religion were tried and not found 

[ iii ] 



INTRODUCTION 



wanting. This story of the missionary work 
done by Jasper Douthit in Shelby county, Illi- 
nois, is a triumphant justification of the claim 
that the gospel of love is more than a match for 
the gospel of hate, and that a reasonable religion 
is better adapted to the needs of all classes and 
conditions of men than the religion of dogma- 
tism and the unreasoning faith of bigotry. 

Notwithstanding Mr. Douthit's attempt to 
tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth about his mission, to anyone conver- 
sant with the facts in the case these pages give 
an inadequate account of the work accomplished 
by this tireless missionary and his gentle, 
dreamy-eyed and shrinking but never faltering 
wife. The facts that can be put into figures — 
the churches built, the Sunday-schools main- 
tained, the church members enrolled, the minis- 
ters, four or more, who have found their work 
in and through Mr. Douthit's mission, are such 
as to challenge admiration, perhaps to defy 
competition among his fellow ministers. But 
the tangible facts, thooC that evade an account- 
ing — his part in modifying the harshness, 
ameliorating the bigotry, dissipating the illiter- 
acy, improving the quality of the schools and 
refining and humanizing the village, city and 

[ iv ] 



INTRODUCTION 



country life throughout a wide area, represent 
the highest achievements of this missionary in 
" Egypt." It is not going too far afield to dis- 
cover some strains of the humanitarian faith 
preached by Jasper Douthit, represented by the 
better fences, the more passable roads, the safer 
bridges, the flowers in the front yards, the well 
dressed and well kempt children sitting in up-to- 
date school houses and receiving efficient tuition 
from competent teachers in the countryside 
traversed by him for over forty-five years. 

When Mr. Douthit comes to Chicago there is 
a parish meeting of his own ready to greet him, 
and the present writer has heard his name pro- 
nounced with love and affection beyond the 
farthest ranges of the Rockies by those who 
have been strengthened by him in times of sor- 
row, who perchance have plighted marriage 
vows in his presence, or who have brought their 
children to receive baptismal blessings at his 
hands. 

The Lithia Springs Chautauqua, situated in 
its ample and splendid forest, with its annually 
increasing throng of happy, gentle, appreci- 
ative men, women and children, drawn from 
Douthit's territory, for his bailiwick is a wide 
one, is a fitting and eloquent witness to the 

[ V ] 



INTRODUCTION 



effectiveness of his work. The Unitarian 
friends who through the American Unitarian 
Association and other channels have made this 
work possible through all these years, can find 
no higher use for their money than to con- 
tinue their support, with increasing confidence 
and generosity, of this great inter-denomina- 
tional and cross-party conference that tells so 
mightily for personal purity, civic righteous- 
ness, and the spiritual life. 

I have used the word " sad " in connection 
with the life of my friend Jasper Douthit. 
Like all sensitive souls, he has a great capacity 
for suffering. As will be seen, he has ever been 
torn by his ideals ; his spirit has been often 
fretted by the great chasm between the things 
he would and the things he could do. But 
Brother Douthit's power of enjoyment is also 
great, and I regret that he has not been able 
to put in the sunshine which made the shadows 
in the picture possible. But what artist can? 

My acquaintance with Mr. Douthit began in 
the student days at Meadville. My first visit to 
his home was while he still lived on the old home- 
stead in the log house with a frame enlarge- 
ment, necessitated by the increasing family. 
This home at that day could be reached only 

[ vi I 



INTRODUCTION 



on horseback ; it was a voyage by water and not 
a journey by land, so profound were the muddy 
depths between the dreary Httle station and the 
lonely little cabin. I have been in close touch 
with him and his work throughout the forty or 
more years of our acquaintance. I think I 
opened the campaign in Shelbyville, preaching 
the first sermon in the old court-house that led 
to the establishment of his church. I think I 
know the man and the temper of his spirit. Be- 
fore the occasion comes, Douthit is often cast 
down ; after the occasion passes, he is often torn 
with disappointment and humiliation ; but he 
ever rises to the occasion and his uttered words 
are charged with courage, while his message 
is ever a cheerful one. The sickly, sorrowful 
looking man, once on the platform or in the 
pulpit, takes on robustness. His eyes flame, 
his voice, though often strident and sometimes 
shrieking, always carries conviction and sym- 
pathy and oftentimes enthusiasm. 

Mr. Douthit and I have not always agreed. 
There have been times when I have seriously dis- 
tressed him ; I probably have believed more in his 
work at times than he has in mine. On this ac- 
count I can the more confidently declare the po- 
tency of the man, the contagious quality of his 

[ vii ] 



INTRODUCTION 



faith. His spirit was larger than his words, 
though his words represented ever the largest 
gospel that disturbed his countryside. 

I have spoken of the support which his mis- 
sion has received at the hands of the Unitarians, 
mostly from the east. Great credit is due those 
who have held up the hands of this Unitarian 
missionary whose antecedents, training, manner 
and method were so un-Unitarian. But in the 
interest of the next missionary I venture to add 
that much of the pathos in Douthit's work has 
been rooted in the carking anxieties as to how 
the modest needs of the humble home were to be 
supplied. The support was always enough to 
keep the light burning on the pulpit, but not 
enough to make the heart free from kitchen 
anxieties. The little margin between the " just 
enough to keep life " and the " enough to make 
life joyful " as well as loyal was often wanting. 
Jasper Douthit has never been an extravagant 
man; his home life and needs were of the 
simplest kind. If any money slipped through 
his fingers it was always for " the cause," and 
still it is sad to think that that small financial 
distance, the Dickens " six-pence " that made 
the difference between happiness and misery, 

[ viii ] 



INTRODUCTION 



was never quite covered in Douthit's expense 
book. 

It would be interesting to know the aggre- 
gate of the money support given to this re- 
markable ministry during the forty-five or more 
years of its activity. It would doubtless seem 
a goodly sum, but compared with the hopes 
raised, the purposes strengthened, the loves en- 
gendered, aye, compared with the sums more 
lavishly expended on less important and less 
fertile causes, the sum would indeed be paltry. 
And certain it is that if the end could have 
been anticipated from the beginning, if the 
story, even as inadequately told in this book, 
had been known before it was enacted, far more 
willingly would have been added the small per- 
centage of increase which would have made the 
difference between anxiety and confidence, sleep- 
less nights and grateful sleep. 

Take it all in all, I think the readers will be 
glad that Jasper Douthit has told his own story. 
They will read it, now with tear-dinmied eyes, 
and again, perhaps, with an incredulous smile. 
It is a story which it would be hard to parallel 
in modern American life for its uniqueness, its 
historic value, its heroic persistency and its 

[ ix] 



INTRODUCTION 



spiritual suggestiveness. It is the story of an 
Oberlin of southern Illinois, a rustic Channing 
of the prairies, a Theodore Parker of the log 
house, reared in the land of mud and malaria. 



Jenkin Lloyd Jones. 



[ X] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STOEY 



/ 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



I was born October .10, 1834, in Shelby 
County, Illinois, on a farm four and one-half 
miles east of Shelbyville. My birthplace was 
at the head of Jordan Creek, named for my 
mother's father, Francis Jordan, who with his 
family, were the fii-st white settlers in that 
vicinity, whither they removed in 1828. The 
land consists chiefly of flat prairie, with groves 
of timber bordering the creeks, and the river 
Okaw, which at its mouth is called the Kaskaskia, 
flows through the plain. The soil around my 
birthplace is black, mucky, and very fertile. 
The roads are so muddy a part of the year as 
to be almost impassable for wagons. Most of 
the land was originally set apart by the state 
as swamp land, considered unfit for cultivation, 
and was sold for about fifty cents an acre. By 
drainage it has now become valuable farm land, 
and is worth one hundred dollars and more per 

[ 1 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

acre. In digging wells, logs several inches in 
diameter are sometimes found from twenty-five to 
a hundred feet below the surface. Evidently this 
country was once covered with water to a great 
depth. Coal and gas may be found in many 
places at the depth of a hundred or more feet 
below the surface. The Lithia mineral springs 
are in the Okaw River woods, about two and one- 
half miles from my birthplace. These springs 
boil from the earth and at intervals emit gas, 
so that if fire is held close to the water it will 
bum. 

I grew up where I was bom and worked on a 
farm until I was seventeen years old. Here on 
the family farm rest the bones of my mother and 
father and grandfather and grandmother 
Douthit and scores of relatives. By this grave- 
yard is the Jordan Unitarian Chapel, where my 
brothers and sisters and most of their children 
and other relatives and neighbors worship. My 
life has been spent in Shelby County, excepting 
eighteen months when I was with my parents 
in Texas, in 1843-1844) ; part of a year at 
Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 
1856; a year in Hillsboro, 111., in 1858, as 
Superintendent of Public Schools ; a year in 
Massachusetts, in 1858 and 1859, in the employ 

[ 2 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

of Fowler & Wells at their branch office in Bos- 
ton, three years at the Meadville School in 
Pennsylvania, 1864 and 1867, and three months 
immediately after graduation, in 1867, as pas- 
tor of the Unitarian Society in Princeton, Il- 
linois. 

My great-grandfather, Evan Douthit, came 
with his family from Nashville, Tenn., about 
1830, and built a log cabin home five miles east 
of where Jordan Chapel now stands. What in- 
terests me about this cabin, which stood until 
1896, is the fact that this grandsire and his 
little Welsh-Irish wife, my great-grandmother, 
who lived to the age of a hundred and fifteen 
years and died in Palestine, Texas, were, in those 
early days, accustomed to walk together five 
miles through a pathless forest and high prairie 
grass, to attend religious meetings at a place 
two miles south of Lithia Springs. This great- 
grandfather was a " hardshell " Calvinistic Bap- 
tist preacher. About two years before I was 
bom, he and his family, with the exception of 
the oldest son, my grandfather, moved to Texas, 
then a part of Mexico, and he and his sons were 
with the army that finally captured Santa Anna 
and made Texas an independent republic. 

My father and grandfather were pioneer 

[ 3 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

farmers and cattle dealers. They drove herds 
of cattle all the way across the prairie from 
Shelby County to Chicago, years before there 
was any road to that small village by Lake 
Michigan. 

Andrew E. Douthit, born in 1814, eldest son 
of John Douthit, who was the eldest son of Rev. 
Evan Douthit, was married to Mary Ann Jor- 
dan, on August 13, 1833. These were my 
parents. I am the oldest of a family of six 
sons and two daughters, one son having died in 
infancy. Three brothers and two sisters are 
now living near me and have ever been affection- 
ate co-workers with me. One brother passed to 
Heaven over thirty years ago, after a brief but 
brilliant career looking toward the ministry. 
I cannot think of him as dead, but mightily 
alive and near me to this day. 

My mother's people, as far back as I can 
learn, were habitual pioneers, ever keeping on 
the frontier. They came to the territory of 
Illinois through Tennessee from the South 
about the year 1804. In that year seven Jor- 
dan brothers came from Smith County, Tennes- 
see, to Williamson County, Illinois. When ten 
years of age, my mother rode behind her father 
on horseback one hundred and fifty miles to this 

[ 4 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

vicinity. Soon after her marriage all of my 
mother's people emigrated to Texas. Jordan's 
Saline, noted on the map of Texas, was founded 
by my uncle John Jordan. Grandfather Jor- 
dan and some others of the family died in Texas, 
and most of the survivors pushed on to Califor- 
nia about the time of Freemont's journey across 
the mountains to that country. So far as I 
can ascertain, the Jordans were of Welsh-Irish 
descent, and the Douthits were Scotch-English 
and early immigrants to North Carolina. 

My mother was bom in 1814) in a fort in 
Franklin County, southern Illinois. The fort 
was built by her father, Francis Jordan, and 
his brother Thomas, to protect their families 
and other pioneer settlers from the Indians. 
When mother was six years old, being the 
youngest of a large family of brothers and 
sisters, her father married for a second wife 
Mrs. Elizabeth Dement, a widow who also had 
a large family of children by her first husband. 
Some of this step-grandmother's children have 
been noted for public service to the state and 
country. Her son, Col. John Dement, was a 
member of the Illinois Legislature with Abra- 
ham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas and other 
celebrities. Col. Dement married the daughter 

[ 5 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

of the famous Governor, also Brigadier General, 
Dodge, of Iowa, and their son, Hon. Henry D. 
Dement, served honorably as Secretary of State 
of Illinois for several years. 

My mother, when quite young, had to work 
hard helping to keep house for her father's 
large family of children and stepchildren. She 
had no chance to go to school, but she learned 
to read and write by herself after the day's 
work was done. She was very conscientious — 
morbidly so, perhaps — and extremely sensitive 
to blame, but her conscience compelled her to 
speak out plainly for what she believed to be 
right and against what she believed to be wrong ; 
and for her frankness she was often blamed by 
those about her. She would weep over this, 
and yet persist in saying the unwelcome things. 
Thus when we were in Texas I often heard her 
denounce slavery and plead for the abused ne- 
gro, and she would not consent to my father's 
owning slaves. She felt that she must also say 
things that were regarded as serious heresies in 
the old Baptist church ; but to all her heretical 
remarks the sharp sheriffs of the faith would 
say, *' Sister Mary Ann is good and kind-hearted 
to everybody, she doesn't know any better thaa 

[ 6 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



to talk that way, and we must overlook her weak- 



ness." 



My mother's life was for many years one of 
great trial and sorrow, but she was naturally 
hopeful and had very vivid religious expe- 
riences which gave her comfort and peace amidst 
the sorest trials. My first memory of her reh- 
gious experiences made a deep impression upon 
my life and I will relate it here. 

When a small child I was left alone one day 
to watch her where she had lain for weeks, help- 
less on a sick bed. It was thought she could 
not recover. I was suddenly startled by her 
springing from the bed and exclaiming, 
"Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!" followed by 
some other words about hearing a heavenly 
voice of sweet peace and good cheer. My 
father, hearing her shouts, came running to the 
house. I cried out with great alarm, until my 
mother, with a face that shone out like an an- 
gel's, spoke soothingly to me, saying she was so 
full of joy that she could not help what she 
did, and that she was going to get well. She 
did get better, and lived a score of years longer. 
Her prayer that she might see all her children 
grown was answered. Not long after that 

[ ^ ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

heavenly vision, she was baptized in the Okaw 
River. A great crowd witnessed the ceremony, 
and people said they never knew one who ap- 
peared so like an angel. Those who knew her 
love thus to think of her to this day. I think 
of her too when first her father and all her 
brothers and sisters had emigrated to what was 
then the far distant region of Texas. In the 
night-time I often heard her in her dreams call 
the names of her loved ones so loudly as to 
startle me from my sleep. In the daytime when 
she read a letter from them the tears would flow 
and she would drive harder at her spinning 
wheel as if to chase away sorrow, rehearsing 
the while snatches of those pathetic verses which 
Cowper puts into the mouth of Selkirk, on the 
lonely isle of the Pacific: 

" I am out of humanity's reach ; 

I must finish my journey alone. 
Never hear the sweet music of speech — 
I start at the sound of my own. 

" Religion ! What treasure untold 
Resides in that heavenly word ! 
More precious than silver and gold. 
Or all that this earth can afford;" 

[ 8 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Being the first grandchild and son of the 
eldest son of the eldest son in the third genera- 
tion, my grandparents made much of me — I 
think they petted me to my hurt in some re- 
spects. When I was a little child my grand- 
mother would take me in her lap as she sat in 
the old handmade hickory chair before the wide 
open fireplace on winter evenings. She would 
show me the pictures in the big family Bible 
and tell me the stories of Joseph and his breth- 
ren, and the good Samaritan. I learned more 
Bible truth from that grandmother than I ever 
learned from the preachers of my early years. 
In fact I have thought the good seeds planted 
in my heart then from the Great Book saved me 
in after years from despising the Bible when 
I heard the preachers quote it in support of 
slavery, liquor-drinking, the horrible doctrine of 
infant damnation, and the unalterable decree of 
endless torment for most folks — even the good 
people that were not of the elect. 

That memory of my grandmother, with the 
open Bible and pictures, and the stories she 
told me have had more saving power over my 
life than all the Greek and Latin, the philosophy 
and theology, or the higher and lower criticism 

[ 9 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

that I learned in adult years, though this later 
learning was very helpful. I treasure that copy 
of my grandmother's Bible to-day as a most 
precious heirloom. 

I think it was in the fall of 1843, when I was 
about nine years old, that my father and grand- 
father Douthit, with part of their families, went 
to visit my mother's father's kindred, who had 
gone to Texas. We went in wagons over 
rough, dangerous roads, being one month on the 
journey. There we visited my great-grand- 
father and ^reat-grandmother Douthit, near 
Palestine, Texas. Great-grandmother was over 
one hundred years old then. She was little in 
body, weighing not more than eighty pounds, 
but bright in mind and " spry as a cricket," the 
neighbors said. I can see her now, in memory, 
skipping out of doors, to pick up chips to cook 
the family meals in the great open fireplace. 
Sometimes she sent me. Once when I was loiter- 
ing for play, my mother called me to hurry up. 
Just then great-grandfather passed by, leaning 
upon his staff. He looked at me with rebuking 
eyes and said: "My boy, if you don't mind 
your mother, you can never grow to be a good 
man." I never forgot that rebuke. 

I have a most beautiful picture in memory of 
[ 10 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

the last time I saw the dear old grandsire. It 
was at a religious service in the country meet- 
ing-house near Palestine. Great-grandfather 
was the preacher. He was tall and spare, with 
long hair falling upon his shoulders, and beard, 
white as snow, reaching far down his breast. 
His countenance was florid and his eyes pierc- 
ing; but his body was bent and feeble with 
nearly ninety years. He trembled with " the 
palsy," as they called it, so that while he stood 
to preach there were two stout men to support 
him, one at each arm. The sermon was very 
short. I cannot remember the words he spoke, 
but I caught the spirit of it ; and when in after 
j^ears I read the beautiful legend of St. John 
the Revelator, in his old age, an exile on the 
Isle of Patmos, I always thought of the two 
persons as if they were one picture and had 
preached to me the same sermon : " Little chil- 
dren, love one another." 

My first experience with African slavery was 
in Texas. I worked with the slaves in the cot- 
ton fields and cotton gins, and came to love the 
negroes, for they were very kind to me. They 
would gather in their cabins on Sunday and of 
nights, to hear me read the Bible to them. Then 
seemed to come to me my first call to preach. 

[ 11 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

I saw slaves for slightest offenses cruelly beaten 
by drunken overseers, till blood ran down their 
bodies to their heels. I took their part, wept 
aloud at their suffering, and longed to live to 
help them toward the North Star. 

In 1844, as we returned home from Texas on 
a boat down Red River to New Orleans, there 
was a beautiful mulatto mother with a bright 
child on board. My mother had four children 
then, myself the eldest. We played with the 
mulatto child and came to love it dearly. I re- 
member how the mother of that child would say 
to my mother : " I love my children as j'ou 
do yours, but nobody can tear your children 
away from you and sell them to different owners 
as so many cattle. But I have had all of mine 
but one sold from me and widely separated from 
each other. Only this little one is left with me. 
And now they are taking me and it to sell at 
auction in New Orleans." 

Then she would weep bitterly and my mother 
would weep with her. Finally, as our boat ap- 
proached the wharf in New Orleans, that slave 
mother with her child in her arms went over- 
board, and in spite of all attempts to prevent, 
they sank forever. It "was thus that distressed 
mother sought to escape from the hell of slavery. 

[ 12 ] 



II 



In body, I am a degenerate son of my 
foreparents, particularly of the Douthit family. 
Great-grandfather Douthit was tall and thin, 
but of wiry muscle. His eldest son, my grand- 
father, was a giant in strength. He and Col. 
Davy Crockett, the pioneer congressman and 
brave soldier, were related, and were near neigh- 
bors in eastern Tennessee. Colonel Crockett was 
famous for physical prowess. It will be remem- 
bered that he volunteered to fight for the in- 
dependence of Texas and he and his company 
were overwhelmed and all killed in the Alamo. 
I have heard those say who knew, that my 
grandfather was the only man in the vicinity 
of Colonel Crockett's home in eastern Tennessee 
who could lift equally with him. In clearing 
up the woodland for cultivation, when a very 
heavy log was to be hfted and carried to the 
heap to be burned, John Douthit and David 
Crockett were the only two that could lift to- 
gether, one at each end of the handspike held 
under the big end of the log. My father 

[ 13 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



weighed about two hundred and seventy-five 

pounds. 

I was a puny, crying child, my mother said, 
and she hardly expected to raise me. I have 
never weighed more than a hundred and thirty 
pounds, and am nearly six feet in height. 
When thirty-five years of age, insurance com- 
panies refused to take any risk on my life ; and 
during much of my ministerial life, especially 
during strenuous periods, I have been horizontal 
at least one day in the week, on an average, 
and wholly unfit for any good to anybody. 
My mother died at fifty-eight, and I did not 
expect to live beyond that age. But here I am 
at the age of seventy-three, in better health in 
some respects than at any time in my life. To 
be so weU and able to keep busy is the surprise 
of my life and a marvel to those who have 
known me so long. I ascribe it primarily to 
the power of spirit over matter. I early learned 
to believe that the religion of Jesus taught 
that it is sinful to abuse the body. I came to 
believe that an ounce of prevention is worth 
more than a pound of cure. Therefore, from 
early in life, I have totally abstained from in- 
toxicants, narcotics, opiates, and all harmful 
drugs. I have not in my lifetime spent for 

[ 14 ] 




CABIN BUILT IN 1830 BY MR. DOUTHIt's GREAT-GRANDFATHER 




OLD LOG CHURCH, BUILT ABOUT SIXTY YEARS AGO 

The hevm logs are now covered with boards 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

myself and mj family five dollars for treatment 
with drugs, and not a dollar that I can remem- 
ber for patent medicines. My diet for over fifty 
years has been mostly fruits, cereals and vege- 
tables. 

I am convinced that there is nothing that will 
strengthen a feeble constitution and so conduce 
to health and long life as to be at peace with 
the good God and to seek to bless one's neigh- 
bors. Alas ! the graveyards around me are 
populous with those of much stronger natural 
constitutions than I. They died prematurely 
for lack of knowledge and for want of more 
vital religion. They became slaves to bad hab- 
its in eating, drinking and living. 
^ The first dollar I earned was by pulling 
" movers' " wagons out of the mud holes with a 
yoke of oxen. The state road along which emi- 
grants moved passed by my father's home, and 
in the rainy season the wagons often stuck in 
the mud. I spent that first dollar for a year's 
subscription to the Phrenological Journal, pub- 
lished by Fowler & Wells, in New York City. 
That journal taught me the great importance 
of self-control and of a " sound mind in a sound 
body.'* I never spent a dollar in my life that 
I think resulted in greater benefit to me. It 

[ 15 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

led to information that brought greater good. 
I made my start as a pubhc lecturer by speak- 
ing on phrenology and kindred subjects. I am 
aware of the fact that phrenology has been 
abused by being associated in many minds with 
" bumpology " and the examining of heads for 
twenty-five cents each, somewhat as the sublime 
science of astronomy has been abused by as- 
trology. Nevertheless, the fundamental prin- 
ciples and practical importance of phrenology 
are now recognized by all who have thoroughly 
investigated it, including such eminent scientists, 
statesmen and philanthropists as Spencer, Glad- 
stone, Horace Mann, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, and 
Henry Ward Beecher. I had the reputation at 
one time of being an expert in the phrenologi- 
cal delineation of character. I could hypnotize 
though I never could be hypnotized; but as a 
lecturer on psychology I became convinced that 
I was using learned words about a mysterious 
force that I did not at all understand, and, of 
course, could not explain — a force that in the 
hands of the unscrupulous might do much mis- 
chief. Therefore I stopped lecturing or dem- 
onstrating on the subject; and for the past 
forty years I have seldom mentioned it pub- 
licly. I continue, however, to hold an open 

[ 16 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

mind ready for more light upon psychological 
questions. 

When a boy I was influenced by others to do 
what I would not have done if I had been told 
by those I loved and trusted that it was wrong. 
In fact, I did things I would not have done if 
I had ever learned that the Bible condemned 
such acts, because my mother and my grand- 
mother told me that the Bible contained God's 
word, and I believed them. I well remember 
when I would have shamefully violated one or 
more of the Ten Commandments but for the 
authority of my mother's Bible. This fact 
convinces me of the danger in arousing doubts 
about the Bible in the minds of children. It 
were infinitely wiser and better, first and always, 
to emphasize the everlasting truths of this 
Book of books. These truths are mighty to 
save from sin and error — mighty to create the 
faith that makes faithful. I have known too 
many young people led into chronic skepticism 
and become libertines by being taught that the 
Bible is full of error and of no authority. Let 
us welcome biblical criticism, but it should be 
given wisely at the proper age, and in a reverent 
spirit, so as to create rather than destroy love 
for the truth. 

[ n ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

In boj^hood my diet was necessarily very sim- 
ple, mostly com bread and milk and fruit, and 
I lived much of the time in the open air as cow- 
boy and plowboy. However, I began life with 
one dreadfully dangerous habit ; nameh*, the 
custom of taking a dram of whiskej' every 
morning before breakfast for the sake of health. 
It was claimed that it would prevent the ague 
and milk sickness, which in early days were most 
prevalent and dread diseases in the vicinity of 
my home. The habit grew, of course, so that 
we must take a dram before each meal and then 
one between meals, and still oftener on stormy 
days and in very cold or very hot weather. In 
the harvest field we must drink liquor every 
time we drank water. Once in hay-making, 
when I was about sixteen years old I drank till 
I was so tipsy that I talked and behaved very 
foolishly. When I came to myself, I felt ex- 
tremely mortified and vowed to God that I 
would never drink another drop. It was a hard 
fight to keep that vow. I was ridiculed and 
laughed at by almost everybody except my 
mother. They said I was a temperance fanatic, 
though I hardly knew what that meant. I had 
never heard a temperance lecture and knew noth- 
ing of taking the pledge, but I was ambitious 

[ 18 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

to have good sense and grow manly, and I felt 
that liquor would spoil me. The vow then 
made has been kept till this day, excepting that 
once, years ago, I was tempted by a physician 
to take a little wine for my stomach's sake, as 
Paul advised Timothy ; but I made haste to re- 
pent and have not back-slidden since. My old 
family doctor, with whom I advised for forty 
years and who knew the fate of my father, said, 
" Douthit, I would not prescribe liquor to you 
for a hundred-acre farm." He knew there was 
danger of kindling the unquenchable fire that 
has destroyed so many otherwise happy homes 
and blasted so many lives. 

I had to work early and late, helping mother 
and father, from the time I was six years old, 
and without much play, excepting the little 
time at school where I had nothing to do but say 
over A B C's three or four times daily and 
play " bull pen " and " hop scotch " at the 
noon hour. It was rough frontier life; very 
rough, my children and grandchildren would 
think. The only clothes I wore were made by 
my mother. She spun, wove and sewed them 
with her own hands. They were made of flax, 
tow, cotton or wool. When I did not go bare- 
headed, my cap was home-made of cloth, my hat 

[ 19 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

was made by hand out of wheat straw. I went 
barefoot, except in winter; and then my father 
must make the shoes for the whole family, and 
mine would not get made until very cold weather. 
Meantime I would have to walk barefoot over 
the frozen ground, or wade through snow or 
mud, to feed cattle, sheep and hogs, and haul 
fire-wood. I must have been ten or twelve 
years of age when I saw the first pair of boots. 
They were made by a Pennsylvania Dutchman 
who moved into the neighborhood. It marked 
an era in my life when my father got him to 
make my first boots. It created as much talk 
to hear of a man in the country who could make 
boots as it did when the first train of cars came. 
There was a rush to the boot-maker. He would 
make promises and fail again and again to keep 
them, so that I had to go something less than 
a dozen times before I got my boots. But it 
was a greater fortune than it would be for me 
to get a fine horse and buggy now, badly as I 
sometimes feel the need of them. 

The memories of my home for the first ten 
years of my life are very precious, bright and 
beautiful. I have in my recollection a blessed 
picture of our family, after the day of toil, 
seated around the great open fireplace with the 

[ 20 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

old lard lamp on the table or the tallow-dip can- 
dle, which was the luxury then for light; 
with mother knitting or sewing or seated at the 
little spinning-wheel spinning flax, while father 
read aloud from David Crockett, Weems's Life 
of Francis Marion, Robinson Crusoe or the 
Bible, or sang some good old hymns. If all 
the memories of that home for years after could 
have been as lovely and blessed as those of the 
first few years, it would have been a richer leg- 
acy for my father's children than all the wealth 
of Solomon. 

Alas, for the fact that so many once equally 
happy homes have been ruined and lives em- 
bittered by that insidious evil, strong drink ! In 
these early years I often heard my father say: 
" A man should drink moderately and control 
himself. Whenever I can't drink without go- 
ing to excess, I will stop." He was a man of 
remarkable will-power, but, nevertheless, through 
the associations of public life and the treating 
custom, he did get to drinking till he was 
a terror to his best beloved, and even the officers 
of the law would flee from him. Then his nat- 
urally strong will was destroyed. He was a 
helpless, miserable victim of that which made 
him sometimes a raving maniac. And finally, 

[ 21 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

as a last resort, to prevent his taking the lives 
of his family it was necessary to put him under 
the bonds of public law. 

I had an opportunity to know much of the 
habits of people in this region. My father 
kept the post-office, called Locust Grove, at our 
home, five miles east of Shelbyville, over sixty 
years ago, when the mail was carried on a stage 
coach from Terre Haute through Charleston, 
Shelbyville, etc., to Springfield. The Locust 
Grove precinct election was held for years at 
our house. My father for much of his life 
held some office of trust. He was for several 
years sheriff and ex-officio collector of the 
county. He collected all the taxes in the 
county, traveling from township to township to 
do it. The revenue must be paid in gold and 
silver, and father hauled it up to Springfield in 
a two-horse covered wagon. I served part of 
the time as his deputy, or assistant, and thus 
became acquainted with many people. The 
county officers were generous, sociable, pleasant 
men, and the custom of treating to drinks 
caused most of them to fall victims to the habit. 
Thus many men of the most popular qualities 
were ruined, among them some of my nearest 
and dearest. For these reasons my first mis- 

[ 22 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

sion work was in fighting this evil. In these 
battles I have received the severest wounds of 
my life. I have been cursed, libeled and black- 
mailed again and again, and my life and prop- 
erty have been often in peril. 

Liberty, union, charity, temperance and 
RIGHTEOUSNESS I — These words have ever had 
a special charm to me since I first caught any 
of their meaning, — though, like all the great 
words, they yield a thousand times more mean- 
ing the longer the things they stand for are 
pondered, even as the real America has been ex- 
tending ever since Columbus sighted a little of 
its shores. My favorite text was Paul's theme 
before Felix : " Righteousness, temperance and 
the judgment to come.'* I warned of the judg- 
ment to come against what to me were the twin 
evils, — strong drink and African slavery. 

Very early, as I have said, the serpent began 
to crawl through our own home. There was an 
old still-house near by, and the candidate for 
office that was most lavish in treating voters 
to whiskey was usually elected. I have seen 
kegs of liquor placed at the polling place all 
day, free as water for everybody, and at night 
almost every one would be more or less drunk, 
including the judges and clerks of the election. 

[ 23 ] 



JASPER BOUTHIT'S STORY 

It was the custom sixty years ago here on 
Christmas and New Year's for neighbors to 
come together at our house and have what was 
called a whiskey stew and spree. A big iron 
kettle or pot (used for making soap and wash- 
ing clothes) that held eight or ten gallons, was 
filled with whiskey and other stuff, and made hot 
and sweetened for men and women, and boys 
and girls to drink. This was the Christmas or 
New Year's treat. The decanter of " bitters '* 
stood on the sideboard in many houses, and the 
preachers who were being entertained drank be- 
fore and after the sermon. When a small boy, 
I attended a sort of bar, a grocery store kept 
by my father where sugar, coffee, etc., and 
whiskey were sold, and felt honored in the doing 
until my eyes were opened to the horror of it. A 
great-hearted man, who was very kind to me 
and whom I loved when he was sober, became a 
terror to his family and to everybody. He said 
he couldn't help it, and so in desperate remorse 
he resolved to kill himself with drink, and he 
did. 

I see him now as he came to our " grocery '* 
(dramshop) one day with a sled drawn over the 
snow by a bob-tailed horse, saying that he had 
come for his last barrel of whiskey. It was 

[ 24 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

loaded on his sled and he got astride and started 
homeward, saying: "This is my coffin." When 
he drank till he was so weak he could not help 
himself to it, the doctor was called and said he 
must have a little toddy (weakened whiskey) to 
keep him alive. I sat by him and gave him the 
toddy in a teaspoon till he breathed his last. I 
would not obey such medical advice now. I saw 
many others going down to this death. I saw 
homes made miserable. I was alarmed, and 
would tend bar no more. 



C S5 ] 



m 



My first hard battle was the struggle for an 
education. When sixteen years old I had at- 
tended a district school only about nine months, 
and most of that time I was reciting over and 
over again, four times daily, my A B C's and 
A-b, Ab's. That was then the foolish method 
of teaching. I learned to read at home with my 
mother. The first words she taught me was the 
title of the family Bible. The first scripture I 
remember learning was Proverbs, the fourth 
chapter, and particularly this seventh verse; 
"Wisdom is the principal thing ; therefore get 
wisdom and with all thy getting get understand- 
mg." 

My father was an honest man with excellent 
ability for business, and possessing very popu- 
lar qualities. He would have been wealthy, 
but for strong drink. He loved his children and 
wanted to do his best for them ; but he was 
deeply imbued with Predestinarian Baptist ideas 
about religion and education. 

The Baptist preachers were frequently enter- 
[ 26 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

tained at my father's house, and to hear them 
talk one would suppose they believed that all 
book knowledge, except of the Bible, and per- 
haps arithmetic, was of the devil. They seemed 
to think that if children learned to read, write 
and cipher so as to do ordinary business, it was 
sufficient. My father seemed to think that way. 
When I would beg him to let me go to school, he 
would say, in the summer time, that maybe I 
could go when the crop was harvested. Then, 
after harvest, he would say he could not do 
without me to help feed and herd stock, for he 
kept many cattle and hogs. The result was that 
I could go to school but a few weeks each year. 
I grew more and more dissatisfied with my ig- 
norance, and lost hope that my father would 
allow me to get an education. I had read and 
re-read the few books In our house and had 
studied far into the nights after working hard 
all day. About the only books I had to read 
until I was about sixteen j-^ears of age were the 
Bible, Robinson Crusoe, and the Life of David 
Crockett, written by himself. 

I wanted more books, and used to go into the 
forest on Sundays, without my parents knowing 
it, and chop cord-wood to earn money to buy 
books. I ordered the books from New York 

[ 27 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

City by express. The nearest express office then 
was Springfield, sixty miles distant. In due 
time notice came that the books were at the ex- 
press office. How could I get the box? There 
was no railroad and no way I knew of to get the 
package except to send by my father. He was 
the sheriff of Shelby County, and also collector 
of all the taxes in the county. The taxes must 
be paid in gold and silver, and when he had col- 
lected a chest full, he put it in a covered wagon, 
and, accompanied by a guard, with two horses 
took it to Springfield, the state capital. I asked 
him to bring my books on one of these trips. 
He seemed to think there was dangerous heresy 
in the books, and did not bring them. I felt 
wronged, and told our hired man so. He 
thought so too. He was an illiterate fellow who 
went on sprees occasionally, but he swore he 
would help me get the books. I told him I was 
determined, not only to get the books, but to 
stay away until I got an education, and he vol- 
unteered to give me his wages for that purpose. 
He gave me three silver dollars to begin with. 
One Sunday afternoon in springtime I stole 
away from home, weeping as I went, for I loved 
home dearly. I walked ten miles to the stage 
stand on the way to Springfield. Then, hungry 

[ 28 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

and weary, I waited for the stage coach and 
four horses that carried the mail and passengers 
across the state via Charleston and Shelbyville 
to Springfield. It was late at night when the 
stage coach came along. The passengers quizzed 
me as to where I came from, whither bound 
and what for. I frankly told them all. Most 
of them advised me to go back home to my 
mother. There was one stout burly man with 
long black beard, whom I took to be a cattle 
dealer, who said gruffly to me that I was doing 
wrong and should go back home. But one 
good man commended my course and hoped I 
would be a good boy and make a useful man. 
We rode all night, arriving in Springfield about 
daybreak. I got my box of books as soon as the 
express office was opened and took it into a quiet 
corner of a store to examine the contents. Be- 
sides some books on self -education and the laws 
of health, there was a phrenological bust by L. 
N. Fowler. A bald-headed man eyed me curi- 
ously as I opened the box, and asked where I 
came from and what I meant to do. I told him 
that I had run away from home to get an educa- 
tion. He shook his head ominously and said: 
" My lad, you better go back to your mother, 
quicker." Finding no comfort there, I went for 

[ 29 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

a walk on the street and saw a sign of " Book- 
binding and Store." That was a charming 
sight, such as I had never before seen. I went 
in and asked to work for my board and clothes 
in that store for six months or a year. It 
seemed a splendid opportunity to get knowledge. 
The head man took quite an interest in me, and 
after much close questioning offered to give me 
a year's schooling if I would bind m^'self to 
serve an apprenticeship in book-binding. 

I promised to report next day if I decided to 
accept the proposal. I hesitated to be bound so 
long a time to a stranger. As I walked, or 
rather gawked, about the only capital city I had 
ever seen, I met a little bow-legged man who 
looked at me curiously and asked if I wanted to 
hire at work. I told him that I did. He asked 
if I could drive oxen hitched to a dirt-scraper on 
the railroad. I told him I thought I could. 
Then he said he would give me nine dollars a 
month on trial, if I could begin at once. I 
agreed to do so because I was almost penniless 
and wanted to earn my bread and board at least. 
Then the little man told me the work was to help 
build the Illinois Central Railroad, near the west 
line of Shelby County and sixteen miles from 
Shelbyville. This surprised me. I shrank 

[ 30 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

from going back so near home. However, I 
felt that I must stick to my contract. The httle 
man promised to bring my box of books, and 
the next morning just as the sun rose, I started 
with face toward it, to walk to the place where 
I was to work, about forty-five miles southeast 
of Springfield. 

About noon I grew weary and faint, and 
called at a one-room cabin and asked the woman 
for a drink of water. She waited on me cheer- 
fully, inquired where I was going, and said: 
" Poor boy, you look as if you were almost 
starved. Won't you have a glass of milk and a 
piece of gooseberry pie.'' " 

I replied that I would like it very much, but 
did not have enough money to pay for it and 
lodging that night; for I feared I could not 
reach my journey's end that day. 

" Oh ! " said the woman, " I don't mean to 
charge you anything. You are very welcome 
to what I have." 

That was the most refreshing lunch I ever 
remember eating. I had eaten very little since 
leaving home two days before, and had spent for 
stage fare, express package, and so on, all but 
twenty-eight cents of the three dollars given 
me by father's hired man. I pushed on more 

[ 31 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

briskly, half hoping I might reach my destina- 
tion before dark. But when night came it was 
very dark. I was three or four miles from the 
end of my journey, and the remainder of the 
road was very dim and through high prairie 
grass. I had walked over forty miles and was 
about exhausted. There was a cabin of round 
logs in a little grove on the prairie. It was a 
few miles northwest of where Pana now stands. 
There was a lone woman in the cabin. I asked 
her if I might stay over night. 

" I don't like," she said, " to turn away 
strangers this dark night, but my old man went 
hunting and has not got back." 

I pleaded with her to just give me shelter till 
daybreak. 

"Well," said she, "I haven't the heart to 
turn you off into the dark to walk across that 
prairie. You might be lost and the wolves get 
you. Come in ! " 

The husband came home at a late hour with 
some venison, for he had killed a deer. Early 
next morning we had breakfast of hard, fried 
venison, corn bread and milk. 

" Now, what do I owe you ? " I inquired of the 
man. 

" Oh," said he, " we never charge strangers." 
[ 32 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

But I insisted on paying him something. 

" Well, then, if you are a mind to, you may 
give the old woman a bit." 

That meant a silver piece of twelve and one- 
half cents. I had only a twenty-five-cent piece 
and a three-cent piece. When I handed the 
woman the twenty-five-cent piece, they both ex- 
claimed, " Oh, we haven't any change, just keep 
your money, and sometime when you are passing 
this way, you may hand us the change." 

But I insisted that they should take the twen- 
ty-five cents and I would wait for the change 
until I came that way again. They consented. 
I have never met them since. I wish I could 
thank them afresh for their hospitality. All I 
had in the world was the clothes I wore, the three- 
cent piece, and the box of books. I carried the 
three-cent piece in my pocket for nearly thirty 
years as a precious memento, and an incentive to 
economy. I finally lost it, but the grateful 
memories associated with it grow more and more 
green as the years roll on. 

I soon arrived on the railroad line at the head- 
quarters of the man for whom I was to work. 
It was a short distance south of where the city of 
Pana has since been built. The man's wife and 
daughter did the cooking. The boarders were 

[ 33 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

mostly Irishmen. I went to work with them. 
When Sunday came, all put on clean shirts but 
mc. I had no change of clothes, nor money to 
buy any. But there Avas a stream of water near 
by. I thought I must get clean somehow. The 
sun shone warm toward noon in a sand-bank on 
the north side of the stream, and there was a 
grove of willows on the north side of the sand- 
bank. I washed my shirt and hung it upon the 
willows to dry while I sat on the sunny sand-bank 
and kept a sharp lookout ready to jump and hide 
in the willows if any one came along. The shirt 
was dried, but badly wrinkled. 

At supper time the good woman said to me, 
" What in the world is the matter with your 
shirt.?" 

I had to tell her. 

*' Lawsee me ! My dear child," she exclaimed, 
why didn't you tell me you had no change? 
Now, I must make you a shirt this very night, 
and Sally must help, if it is Sunday-." 

Sally was her young daughter. So she and 
her daughter sat up that niglit, made the gar- 
ment, and washed and ironed it ready for me 
INIonday morning. 

The five weeks I was with that family at their 
shanty of a boarding house on the prairie, I was 

[ 3^ ] 



i( 



I 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

treated as if I were kith and kin. Thirty years 
passed and I had not seen the mother who made 
that shirt for me. Then I went one Sunday to 
preach in a school-house in a remote district of 
Ilhnois, and there I recognized seated before me 
in the meeting that same httle bow-legged man 
who hired me on the streets of Springfield and 
his wife who was so kind to the runaway boy. 
I must go home with them for dinner. It was 
like a communion service of happy and grateful 
recollections. 

I drove the oxen with the scraper the first 
month. I worked with the Irishmen and we had 
a good time reading " Uncle Tom's Cabin " in 
the shade at the noon hour, and I also experi- 
mented on them with my phrenological bust. 
But I thought I could make more and be more 
independent by taking a contract for a job of 
shoveling dirt at so much per yard. Before I 
had finished this job, I spied a covered wagon 
coming across the prairie. A large, tall man 
was walking ahead of it. The man was my 
grandfather Douthit. My father was driving 
the wagon. They had been with another load 
of silver and gold to Springfield, and had some- 
how got track of me. Grandfather told me that 
mother was greatly distressed about me. Father 

[ 35 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

wanted me to go home for her sake, and he 
promised that if I would go and help make an- 
other crop, I should go to school the next fall 
at the new Academy that was then being built 
in Shelbj ville. I said I must finish my contract 
at grading first, and then I would go home, and 
I did. But I could not enter the Academy for 
nearly a year afterwards. That was in the 
spring of 1854. 

I was very kindly received by the good prin- 
cipal, Charles W. Jerome, and his assistants. 
The school was founded and conducted under 
Methodist auspices ; but in a liberal Christian 
spirit. There was no sectarianism or bigotry 
about it to hurt any of us. It stood for clean 
habits, no liquor and no tobacco, nor any- 
thing that defiled. The daily morning reading 
of the Bible, with prayer and song, are among 
the most precious and blessed memories of my 
life. Principal Jerome is now living in Atlanta, 
Georgia, over eighty years of age. While a 
zealous IVIethodist, he has been a constant and 
helpful friend to me in the mission of my life. 

Principal Jerome permitted me to occupy a 
little room in the seminary building where I 
slept and boarded myself, with the help my 

[ 36 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

mother could give. I earned my tuition acting 
as janitor. I also earned something as book- 
agent. I sold Fowler & Wells's publications, 
especially those written by Rev. G. S. Weaver. 
One of his books was entitled " Hopes and Helps 
for the Young." My first piece committed to 
memory and declaimed in school was from that 
book. The subject was " Perseverance." The 
piece closed with Longfellow's "Psalm of Life.'* 
That book was a favorite with many of the stu- 
dents. I was surprised to learn in after years 
that the author was a Universalist minister. Dr. 
Weaver is still living, or was a few weeks ago, 
— 1908, — about ninety years of age, at Canton, 
New York, the seat of the Universalist Divinity 
School. He has been very kind to me, and often 
writes me words of hearty sympathy and good 
cheer. 

During my attendance at the Shelby Acad- 
emy, I also taught a subscription school in 
arithmetic and writing. This school was held 
on Friday evenings and Saturdays and Sundays. 
People who try to read my scrawls now laugh 
skeptically when they learn that the writer was 
once a teacher of penmanship. The school was 
ten miles from Shelbyville. I walked to it over 

[ 37 ] 



JASPER DOUTIIIT'S STORY 

nuiddy roads. Sometimes I had to wade waist 
deep tlirough cold water, across swollen streams, 
to meet the appointments. 

The hired man who loaned me the three dol- 
lars when I first left home was as good as his 
word. While I was at the Academy he would 
come to Shelbyville and, when sober, would 
come to the school door and ask for " Jack " 
Douthit, as I was then called. I would have to 
go to the door, for he was diffident about com- 
ing in. Then he would ask how I was getting 
along, and if I needed some more cash, and would 
insist on loaning it to me, saying : " Never 
mind, if you never pay it. I'm a sinner and 
never had any larnin, but I want you to be 
larned. Maybe you'll be President some day." 
When I left school I owed him twenty-five dol- 
lars or more. It seemed a big sum, but I paid 
it, though he insisted in after years in helping 
me more. He would say : " If I don't let you 
have it, I will spend it for drink." During the 
Civil War he was in prison for a long time near 
the home of his own people in the state of Ten- 
nessee. I wanted to visit him to help him to 
liberty, but could not. When he escaped from 
the prison he came to see me by night. He had 
got into a spree on the way and had been in the 

[ 38 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

calaboose, for he was riotous and dangerous 
when drinking. He was feeling very badly and 
suffering intense remorse. He asked me to pray 
God to forgive him, and vowed he would drink 
no more. He then went back to his people in 
Tennessee, and his enemies stole upon him at 
night when he was in bed, suffering with wounds, 
and shot him to death. Dear, faithful old 
friend ! I would rather meet your fate in the 
Great Hereafter than that of the fellows who 
for your vote or your money tempted you to 
ruin. 

After two terms at the Academy, I was en- 
gaged to teach in the primary department. 
After one year as teacher I resolved to go and 
work my way, if possible, through Antioch 
College at Yellow Springs, Ohio, for I had read 
of Horace Mann, the President, and I longed 
to be seated at the feet of the man whom I had 
learned to love without seeing. But there were 
good, pious people who sincerely believed that 
Antioch College was an infidel institution and 
that its President was a dangerous man, leading 
young people astray. Many young men and 
women were kept in that way from being blessed 
by that great educator, statesman and philan- 
thropist. I heard that I might have a chance 

[ 39 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

to pay my way through Antioch College by 
manual labor and I started for Yellow Springs 
in the fall of 1856. 

On leaving Shelbyville my good Methodist 
pastor gave me a note of introduction to Dr. 
Curry, President of Asbury University, (now 
DePauw), Greencastle, Indiana. I stopped 
over and called on President Curry. He re- 
ceived me kindly and urged me to remain and go 
to school there, and he would give me a chance 
to work my way in part. While seated in the 
depot, feeling very lonely and thinking of Dr. 
Curry's proposal, a woman with a sunny, moth- 
erly face approached me and spoke to me kindly, 
and then called her husband and introduced him. 
The gentleman was Professor Butler of Wabash 
College. He was a cousin of Mrs. Lydia Sigour- 
ney, the author and poet. To their inquiries I 
told them where I was going. They said I had 
better go to Wabash College at Crawfordsville, 
Indiana, which was only thirty miles distant. 
They promised to get me a chance to work my 
way there and they would be good friends to me. 
I was charmed by their kindness, and next day 
walked to Crawfordsville. I was given a room 
in the college, where I worked and boarded my- 
self, mostly on baked potatoes and graham 

[ 40 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

bread and milk, for six months. The diet was 
wholesome, but studying hard and eating alone 
was not favorable to good digestion. I became 
miserably homesick. President White and Pro- 
fessors Hovey, Hadley and Butler were very 
kind to me. They said I might go home for a 
visit ; and, if I would return to complete some 
studies, they would have me sent to Lane Theo- 
logical Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, to prepare 
for the ministry. I accepted the offer on condi- 
tion that I would not be obliged to enter the min- 
istry of any particular sect. Now my father 
was strongly opposed to my being an educated 
minister. He thought I Avould make a better 
stock dealer or merchant. When he learned 
that they were going to make a preacher of me, 
he offered to furnish means to establish me in the 
book and drug business, if I would stop going 
to school. I yielded to the temptation, and so 
dealt in books and drugs for a year. But I still 
wanted to be a preacher. 



[ 41 ] 



IV 



One cause of my homesickness and nervous 
dyspepsia at Wabash was the want of female 
society, — a want that would have been gratified 
at Antioch College, for that was the only col- 
lege then in the countr}', unless it was Oberlin, 
that stood for the co-education of the sexes. I 
had mother, sisters, aunts and cousins at home, 
in the district school and at " Shelby Male and 
Female Academy,*' as the seminary was first 
called; but at Wabash College I became ac- 
quainted with no woman except the one who 
baked graham bread for me. I was too diffi- 
dent, and could not dress well enough to culti- 
vate acquaintances. In my extreme loneliness I 
took consolation in correspondence. By a sort 
of romantic " happen so," as some would call it, 
though I prefer to think of it as a special Prov- 
idence, I got into correspondence with Miss 
Emily Lovell of East Abington, Mass. I had 
never met her — I had only read some of her 
verses in print, and I felt drawn toward her, so 
that I was encouraged to tell her frankly about 

[ 4^ ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

myself, my ambitions, and the noted people and 
authors I liked, among whom were Longfellow, 
Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Mann, Mrs. 
Stowe, Dr. Geo. S. Weaver, author of " Hopes 
and Helps for the Young," " The Two Ways of 
Life " and other books published by Fowler & 
Wells, for whom I had been acting as agent. 
Miss Lovell promptly responded to say that my 
favorite authors and people were hers also. We 
told each other frankly about our families, our 
yearnings to be good and to do good. She told 
me how intensely interested she had been in read- 
ing the life of Mrs. Sarah Edgarton Mayo, — 
first wife of the late Rev. A. D. Mayo, D.D., 
and " The Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons." 
She was enthusiastic to be a missionary. She 
wrote me verses about hearing music from the 
throne of God and seeing a magic hand reached 
out to clasp hers in life's journey. She wrote 
me a prayer in verse, of which the closing stanza 
is as follows : 

" Guide Thou my deeds ! 
Teach me, O Lord, how rightly to discern 

The wants my humble means may well supply; 
I've gathered roses, and I fain would turn 
Upon another's brow their grace to lie. 
The wine of life with willing hands I'd serve 

[ 43 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

To needy objects; Father! can it be? 
With heaven-born strength wilt Thou my spirit 
nerve. 
And guide my deeds that they may honor Thee." 

I proposed that we send our ambrotypes to 
Professor L. N. Fowler and let him decide our 
fitness for each other. He made a remarkably 
accurate " hit " when he said the woman would 
be a better wife for me than I could be husband 
for her. 

" The young lady," he said, *' is of high 
moral character, and she is talented, domestic, 
affable, playful and very affectionate ; but she 
is a timid sensitive soul, and it would nearly 
kill her to be scolded. However, if 3^ou make up 
your mind to be largely guided by her counsel 
and conform to her nature, you can spend a 
happy, useful and mutually helpful life to- 
gether." 

I was very unhappy to think myself not 
worthy of such a talented, pure, lovely woman. 
I told her the worst faults which Prof. Fowler 
mentioned, namely, my impulsive temper and 
self-will. I felt that I ought to give up the idea 
of wedding one so good. All the same, when we 
finally met, she said she would take the risk. 

We were married at East Abington, (now 
[ 44 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Rockland) Mass., November 2, 1857, by Rev. 
Varnum Lincoln, the Universalist minister. She 
was a native of that place, and her parents were 
natives of that vicinity. Her grandfather 
Lovell was a soldier of the Revolution, and 
fought at Bunker Hill. General Solomon 
Lovell, he who during the Revolutionary War 
led the Penobscot Expedition, and my wife's 
people have a common ancestry. 

My wife in her girlhood attended Mt. Caesar 
Seminary, Keene, New Hampshire. In early 
life she contributed verses and stories to such 
periodicals as the Universalist Ladies Monthly 
Magazine and the New York Evening Post, 
when the latter was edited by William Cullen 
Bryant. For several years during our mission 
work, besides attention to household duties, she 
gave lessons to young people in Latin and 
French and taught subscription schools. In 
the beginning of my ministry, especially when 
I was disabled, she would Avrite the sermons for 
me to preach. To this woman, under God, I 
owe most of what I have been and what I have 
done of good for nearly fifty years ; and our 
children, two sons and two daughters, have been 
constantly co-workers with us. Winifred, our 
youngest daughter and my housekeeper now, 

[ 45 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

came as a Christmas gift when the mother was 
busy preparing for the first Christmas tree I 
ever saw, and the first in this county, so far as 
I know. It was for the Sunday-school at 
Log Church on Christmas Eve, 18T1 ; and from 
the time that child was old enough to be carried 
to church and Sunday-school, she has never to 
this day missed weekly attendance at church and 
Sunday-school, excepting probably a half dozen 
times, and then only on account of illness. For 
many years she has been a constant Sunday- 
school teacher. 

Our youngest son, Robert Collyer, is pastor 
of the Unitarian Church, Castine, Me. George 
Lovell, our eldest son, has been a constant helper 
in church work, besides acting as business man- 
ager for Our Best Words and for Post-office 
Mission and Lithia Springs Chautauqua. I 
could not manage the Chautauqua without such 
a helper. Our eldest daughter, Helen, wife of 
Mr. Joseph W. Garis, a railroad employee, lives 
at Lake Geneva, Wis., and has ever been a most 
faithful and cheerful helper. 

After our marriage, my wife and I had charge 
of the public schools at Hillsboro, 111., for the 
year 1858, and then we returned to East Abing- 
ton, Mass. At Hillsboro I saw Abraham Lin- 

[ 46 ] 




EMILY LOVELL DOUTHIT 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

coin for the last time, and heard him speak at the 
time of the famous debate with Senator Doug- 
las, in 1858. He spoke in a circus tent at Hills- 
boro. I see him now as he walked into the tent 
at the farther end from where I was seated. 
His trousers were baggy at the knees, and he 
looked like some ungainly giant. A crowd was 
around him, but he seemed a head taller than the 
rest. He and Douglas did not actually meet 
there. Douglas had visited Hillsboro a few 
days before and made his speech to an immense 
crowd out in a grove, for the weather was fair. 
The day appointed for Lincoln threatened rain, 
so that the circus tent was engaged for him. He 
had spoken but a little while when the rain 
poured down In torrents and drove the people 
off their seats to stand close around the speaker's 
stand in the middle of the tent. Some one sug- 
gested that they stop the meeting till the rain 
was over, but the crowd cried : " Oh ! no. Go 
on, go on ! " Lincoln did " go on " for nearly 
two hours, and the people kept crowding closer 
and closer to him as if they were hypnotized. 
Mr. Lincoln seemed to me to grow taller and his 
face became more radiant the longer he spoke. 
I remember what he said of Senator Douglas's 
theory of " Popular Sovereignty," that is, the 

[ 47 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

right of the people to vote slavery up or down 
in the territories. " The fact is," said Lincoln, 
" Judge Douglas's theory of popular sover- 
eignty seems to me about as thin as the soup 
made from the shadow of a starved pigeon." 
In the same speech I remember his saying: 
" There Is an honest old man down in Georgia by 
the name of Toombs. He boasts that he will call 
the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill 
Monument. Dear fellow, he little knows the 
temper of the Northern people upon the subject 
of slavery, or he would never make such a boast 
as that." 

Up to the time I heard that speech of Lin- 
coln's I had been a Douglas Democrat, though 
opposed to slavery and an advocate of total ab- 
stinence. But when Senator Douglas spoke in 
Hillsboro they made a banquet for him at night 
where wine and whiskey flowed shamefully. 
When Lincoln came, his friends proposed a ban- 
quet for him, and were going to have liquors. 
But Lincoln protested. He said his friends 
would please him best if they furnished no drinks 
that would intoxicate, and they obeyed him. 
From that time I was a convert to Lincoln, and 
would have died In his stead. I wept at his 
death as if he had been my best friend on earth. 

[ 48 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Then I solemnly vowed that I would henceforth 
live to keep his memory green, taking for my 
motto his memorable words, " With malice to- 
ward none and charity for all, with firmness in 
the right as God gives us to see the right, let us 
finish the work that is given us to do." 

I have tried to keep that motto at the head of 
a column of my missionary publication. Our Best 
Words, for nearly thirty years. 

I have a clear recollection of Lincoln, as I first 
used to see him in the old hotel across the street 
from the court-house where he stopped during 
the terms of the circuit court in Shelbyville. I 
see the Great Commoner as he sat on the porch, 
southern fashion, when court was not in ses- 
sion, his long, lank limbs doubled up, or straight- 
ened out with feet propped up, while he read the 
paper or a book, or chatted familiarly with the 
old farmers or his fellow attorneys. He never 
told a story just for the story alone, but always 
to clinch an argument. 

I heard him make a speech in the old court- 
house in Shelbyville, in which he gave his reasons 
for breaking from the old Whig party and help- 
ing to organize the Free Soil, or Republican 
party. There was a very intense partisan spirit 
in those days in southern Illinois, and the sym- 

[49 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

pathy was nearly all with the South, so that an 
outspoken anti-slavery man was considered 
hardly human. Politicians were accustomed to 
indulge in personal abuse and ridicule of their 
opponents, and so did lawyers in pleading in 
court. Consequently, when I went with my 
father, as a boy, to the court-house to hear polit- 
ical speeches or the pleadings of lawyers, I al- 
ways expected to hear them hurl denunciations 
and abuse at their opponents. But on that day, 
when Lincoln gave his reasons for leaving the 
Whig party, I witnessed a very different scene. 
I was surprised at the very pleasant manner and 
kindly spirit in which Mr. Lincoln treated his 
opponents. 

While he spoke, some who had been his as- 
sociates in the Whig party grew furious, inter- 
rupted his speech, and hurled abusive epithets at 
him. I wondered that he took it all so calmly 
and with such self-control. I do not remember 
any words of that speech, I only know that he 
bore testimony against slavery ; but I shall never 
forget how he looked and the manner in which he 
spoke — how patient he was toward his cross 
critics. I went home and told my mother that 
I had heard a lawyer and a politician speak with- 

[ 50 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

out talking harshly or abusing anybody. I had 
never witnessed the like before in my life, 

Lincoln came once again to Shelbyville to 
make a speech after the organization of the Re- 
publican party. There were only about half a 
dozen persons in Shelbyville and vicinity who 
called themselves Republicans. They invited Lin- 
coln to come to Shelbyville and advertised him to 
speak in the court-house. Most of the old parti- 
sans turned the cold shoulder and said they would 
not go to hear him. As the hour approached, 
it seemed as if there would be scarcely any one 
present. Then a few of the friends went to 
Lincoln and said, " Let us not try to hold any 
meeting at the court-house this time, but just 
have a little quiet caucus in the back room of Mr. 
B.'s shoe-shop." To this Lincoln promptly re- 
pHed : " Oh ! we must go into the court-house ac- 
cording to appointment, no matter how few may 
come. We must not seem ashamed of our prin- 
ciples. They should be proclaimed from the 
house-tops all over the nation." 



[ 61 ] 



During the year 1859 I was employed 
part of the time with Prof. D. P. Butler in 
the branch office in Boston, of Fowler & Wells, 
phrenologists and publishers, of New York City. 
During part of the year I lectured on the Science 
of Man and the Laws of Health through the 
towns along the coast between Boston and Ply- 
mouth. I was religiously a wanderer, yearning 
for church fellowship, but the Spiritualists and 
Abolitionists were about the only people that 
were making any noise, and the only ones with 
whom I found any sympathy. The abolition 
orators were thundering, as on Sinai, against the 
indifference and infidelity of the church in re- 
gard to the national sin, African slavery. I 
had become much interested in psychology and 
the phenomena of spiritism. But none of these 
things satisfied my deep religious longings. 
Nearly all the public preaching I heard was of 
the tearing down sort, and I felt the need of 
reconstruction. In other words, I was in that 
transition from the old to the new theology 

[ 52 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

where hundreds make shipwreck of faith for 
want of rational religious sympathy. If it had 
not been for my wife's influence and the read- 
ing of Beecher's and Parker's sermons and pray- 
ers, and also now and then newspaper reports of 
sermons of Drs. Henry W. Bellows and James 
Freeman Clarke, I think I should have become 
an Ishmaelite in rehgion. 

The anti-slavery agitation caused me to read 
James Freeman Clarke's and Theodore Parker's 
sermons as reported in the Boston papers. I 
would have gone to hear Dr. Clarke preach if 
I could have had the opportunity. I was drawn 
to him because I learned that he had exchanged 
pulpits with Theodore Parker when no other 
preachers would do so. I do not remember see- 
ing notices in the papers of any Unitarian 
preaching other than that of Parker and Clarke. 
I lectured in several towns where there were Uni- 
tarian churches, but, strange to say, did not get 
acquainted with any Unitarians. I read and 
was thrilled by Parker's sermons on " The Per- 
manent and Transient in Christianity " and 
" The False and True Revival of Religion." I 
made an effort to hear Parker at Music Hall the 
last Sunday he preached, before he went to Italy 
to die. I was then staying sixteen miles from 

[ 53 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Boston, and I had not money to pay carfare 
to the city and return, so I resolved to walk, 
and started early that Sunday morning; but 
when I had gone about half-way I grew faint 
and turned back, to regret the rest of my life 
that I did not start the day before, in order to 
improve the only opportunity to see and hear 
the man whose printed words had revived in me 
new life and hope. It may be Dr. Channing 
would have helped me as much as Parker ; but 
I had no chance to read him — in fact I had 
scarcely heard of him 

While employed at Fowler and Wells's office, 
near the Old South Meeting-house in Boston, 
I first saw Thomas Starr King. He and Henry 
Ward Beecher were walking arm in arm and 
conversing playfully with each other. I got 
into touch too with William Lloyd Garrison 
and Wendell Phillips. One day a compactly 
built man with genial, ruddy face walked into 
the office and asked for a copy of the Phrevr 
ological Journal, paid for it, spoke a few pleas- 
ant words and passed out. There was a picture 
of the man and a description of his character 
in that number of the Journal. The man was 
the Hon. Henry Wilson, the shoemaker and 

[ 54 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

statesman, who was Vice President during Presi- 
dent Grant's first term. 

When Henry Wilson was on his death bed 
I read in the papers that he kept beside him a 
httle book entitled "Daily Strength for Daily 
Needs," being a selection of scripture, poetry, 
and comforting thoughts by sages and saints. 
I secured a copy of that book at once, and 
have kept it close beside me ever since, at home 
and abroad. When I miss getting a morning 
thought from the book, it often seems as if I 
had failed to get the needed key note to the 
day. 

In the fall of 1859 I came back to Shelby 
County, and my wife and I, now with one child, 
went to keeping house in a little cabin on a 
farm near my birthplace. The first time I got 
a chance to speak, I declared myself an Abo- 
litionist. I believe I was the only one then in 
Shelby County who called himself an Abo- 
litionist in public. This shocked all of my 
friends and relatives. It was terrible, they 
thought; for in their eyes, an Abolitionist was 
a monster, and now to think I had married a 
Yankee wife and turned Abolitionist! The 
newspapers made a sensation of it. For ex- 

[ 65 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

ample, it was reported that, in a Sunday-school 
talk, I had called John Brown a martyr and 
compared him to George Washington. I did 
not say that, but I did sa^' that we must beware 
how we judged those who were unpopular be- 
cause they were a foe to slavery. I said that 
even Washington was unpopular with millions 
of people, when he was ready to die for the 
freedom of others, and that those who die for 
the liberty of their fellow-beings to-day, may, 
in the future ages, wear martyrs' crowns. 
This remark was quickly interpreted as refer- 
ring to the hanging of John Brown, and I was 
called a John Brownite for years, despite the 
fact that I did not at all approve of his bloody 
raid at Harper's Ferry, though I did sym- 
pathize with and admire the pluck of the old 
hero. 

Practically, so far as the local newspapers 
were concerned, there was no free speech on 
political questions in those daj's in southern 
Illinois. Although instinctively hating African 
slavery, yet through ignorance, I gave my first 
vote for James Buchanan for President, but I 
persisted in expressing abolition sentiments and 
was ridiculed and laughed at for my incon- 
sistency. When my eyes were open to see my 

[ 56 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

folly, I tried to make amends, not by allying 
myself with any of the existing parties but 
by pleading for free speech and fair play. 
It was my conviction that civil war might be 
averted if the questions at issue were only 
fairly presented to all the American people. 
Light was what was most needed; so I thought 
then, and I have seen no reason to change my 
opinion. But alas ! the light could only come 
through the lurid flames of devastating war. 

" Fair Play in Politics," was the heading 
of a plea of a half newspaper column which I 
wrote in the early summer of 1860 and sent 
to the editor of the Ohaw Democrat for pub- 
lication. The editor being a personal friend, 
I had hopes of the plea being admitted. After 
considerable squirming, he told me that he would 
be glad to favor me in any way that he could, 
but for the sake of the party he could not admit 
my communication ; " and," said he, " if you 
take any decided stand against the old party, 
I shall be compelled to denounce you publicly." 
I did take a decided stand. But there was no 
paper through which to get my ideas before the 
public until the following July. 

On Saturday morning, July 28, I860, the 
first number of The Shelby Freeman was pub- 

[ 57 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

lished in Shelbyville. Mr, E. E. Chittenden, 
a frail but plucky man, was editor. My re- 
jected article was published in the first num- 
ber and I was made associate editor. The Free- 
man advocated the election of Abraham Lincoln 
for President, and was published weekly till he 
was elected and inaugurated and the first call 
made for volunteers to suppress the rebellion. 
Then the editor, Mr. Chittenden, answered the 
call and went to the war, and the first newspaper 
in southern Illinois devoted to free soil, free 
labor and free speech, died. In April, 1863, 
the press which we had used was bought by 
John W. Johnson, to print The Shelby County 
Union. 

I enlisted from Shelby County in the army of 
the Union, and went up to the state capital 
to be examined and mustered in. I was pale- 
faced and frail in body. The examining sur- 
geon shook his head doubtfully. I thought 
about it over night. I had left my mother in 
great distress and my wife reluctant to Irnve me 
go. I was the eldest son, the other children wert 
still young, my mother sorely needed my 
presence, and I had promised to live near her 
as long as she lived, which was not expected to 
be long. Several of the friends with whom I 

[ 58 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

had enlisted, among them mj old teacher, 
Charles W. Jerome, advised me to return home, 
saying that I could do as much for the cause 
at home as I could as a soldier. Therefore I 
returned, just as determined to die at home for 
my country, if exigency required, as if in the 
army. I lectured on the slavery question and 
" preached politics " as they said, although I 
knew no politics except "Liberty and Union, 
one and inseparable." 

In the spring of 1863, I got into trouble with 
the " Knights of the Golden Circle." The real 
object of that order was to resist the draft, and 
secretly help the rebellion, but it appeared be- 
fore the public in the guise of a " Peace Democ- 
racy." Thus it. misled many well-meaning 
people and gave a chance for bushwhackers and 
other emissaries of the confederacy to come 
into southern Illinois. One of these came from 
Missouri into our district. He called himself 
a preacher. He held meetings at Liberty 
Meeting-house. This house had been built 
for the double purpose of school and church, 
in fact all sorts of meetings, for it was the only 
house where public meetings could be held in 
that district ; and I had stipulated when soli- 
citing funds to build it, that it should be always 

[ 59 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

open to the community and sacred to free 
speech. A lodge of the " Knights of the Gol- 
den Circle " was organized there by the Mis- 
souri bushwhacker, and a score or more of my 
neighbors joined it. Besides secret sessions, the 
lodge held open meetings, to which everybody 
was welcome. In these meetings peace and 
union were talked. 

I went to a meeting of the Circle and begged 
for the privilege of speaking in behalf of peace 
and good-will among neighbors. The Missouri 
man M'as presiding. I arose and said : " Mr. 
Chairman : I am glad to hear that this is a 
Democratic peace meeting. I believe in peace 
and true democracy. Therefore, I beg leave 
to occupy ten minutes or less in reading a letter 
from a brave and patriotic Democrat, Major 
General Rosecrans, and also a short article from 
the Chicago Times, the leading Democratic 
organ of Illinois," — these authorities both con- 
demned the Golden Circle organizations, — 
" Can I have the privilege? " 

The chairman replied that the meeting was a 
Democratic love feast and a private affair for 
the purpose of reorganizing the good old Dem- 
ocratic party, that I could not be allowed to 
speak or read anything, and that if I was keen 

[ 60 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



to exercise free speech I could " go out to the 
brush and bellow forth." To the credit of the 
majority in that meeting, be it said, the chair- 
man was censured for the summary way in which 
I was refused a hearing. Then, after I was put 
out, was held the secret session in which the so- 
called preacher and bushwhacker made a rousing 
speech. He said : " Had it not been for such 
weak-kneed cowardly traitors (the Douglas 
Democrats) we should have had the tyrant 
Lincoln dethroned long ago, yea, verily, and 
beheaded. I tell you we must prepare to fight. 
Clean out your old guns and get ready. If 
you have no gun, go up north and press one, 
and while you are there press a horse and am- 
munition. If we can't fight on a large scale, we 
can bushwhack it. If you don't know how, I 
can teach you. I have had some experience in 
bushwhacking myself." 

My younger brother, George, who was not 
known to the chairman and was so very quiet 
and sleepy-looking that night that he was 
scarcely noticed in the noisy crowd, was not 
put out. This brother had an excellent mem- 
ory, and reported that speech word for word. 
I wrote out an account of this meeting and ex- 
tracts from the speeches, and I took it to the 

[ 61 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

only newspaper then printed in the county. It 
was rejected, not because its correctness was 
questioned, but because the press of the county 
was then intensely partisan, and the editor said 
it would never do to publish such a report. It 
would create discord in the party and make 
votes for the " black Republicans." I then 
sent the report to the St. Louis Democrat, the 
Republican daily most widely read in this part 
of Illinois at that time. On Thursday, March 
19, 1863, it appeared in that paper on the 
first page under flaming headlines that startled 
the country. Here at home the excitement was 
intense. It was as if a bombshell had burst, 
and somebody must surely get hurt or leave for 
other parts in a hurry. Several of those who 
heard the speech of the confessed bushwhacker 
acknowledged that it was correctly reported. 
I learned years afterwards that all concerned 
in that " Knights of the Golden Circle " meeting 
held a council over my report. They all agreed 
that I had " got it mighty korect " ; but the 
question was, how I got it. Some suspected a 
traitor in camp, but most of them thought that 
after they had voted me " down and out " that 
night, I had climbed through the house roof 
and witnessed the whole proceedings through 

[ 62 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

the scuttle-hole in the loft. They never sus- 
pected my young brother. 

It was hot times for me for a while. Reso- 
lutions were passed and vigilance committees 
were appointed to warn me, and as a last resort 
to threaten that if I did not desist reporting 
names and speeches for public print I should 
be treated as a spy. I was so stubborn that 
no doubt the reader would have been spared 
these reminiscences but for the fact that my 
father and mother and a large number of my 
kindred who, though grieved at my outspoken- 
ness, strongly resented any violent treatment 
of me. As for the bushwhacker and his victims, 
it seemed that the only way they could remain, 
in the locality and save themselves from arrest 
by government officials was to deny my report 
and publish a hbel on me. The bushwhacker 
therefore prepared a manifesto, vindicating 
himself as a very honorable and peaceable 
gentleman, stating that he had never uttered the 
words reported of him in the daily papers, and 
that the secret conference, held at Liberty 
Meeting-house, was in the interest of peace and 
harmony among neighbors; and adding that 
Jasper Douthit was a notorious blood-thirsty 
Abolitionist, a stirrer up of strife among other- 

[ 63 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

wise peaceable neighbors. Then, to induce 
others to sign that manifesto, the bushwhacker 
told them he knew that the " black-hearted Abe 
Lincoln " had sent me a lot of government arms 
and ammunition which I had secreted in my 
house on the prairie, eight miles from Shelby- 
ville. He induced nine of my neighbors to 
sign this statement and it was published in the 
Okato Patriot of June 12, 1863. 

The manifesto extolled the bushwhacker as " a 
fine school-teacher, a gentleman, patriot and 
peacemaker," declared my report of the meeting 
false and libelous, and continued as follows: 

" With a brief history of the author of the 
article in the Democrat, we close. He is the son 
of a respectable Democrat citizen of the neigh- 
borhood. In his better days he went to Boston 
to attend school and received a stroke of negro- 
phobia which fractured his brain. He is a 
man of small calibre. He is regarded by those 
who know him as maliciously dangerous to the 
community. He pays homage to John Brown. 
This Bostonian Jasper is a breeder of sedition, 
and is daily seeking the life-blood of the genu- 
ine peace men of our country. He should be 
cautioned by those who have any influence over 
him, if any such there be, and if he persists in 
such conduct his presence may become unen- 
durable." 

[ 64 1 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Most of the nine signers told me afterwards 
that they had never read the article until It 
appeared in print. All of them abundantly 
atoned for that wrong which they were led un- 
wittingly to do me. Some of them later became 
earnest members of my congregation and 
helpers in my work, and I ministered at the 
funeral of several of them. Only one of the 
nine is now living. He is over eighty years 
of age, and his home is in a distant city, but 
he wants to be regarded as one of my parish- 
ioners and writes me friendly words of good 
cheer. One of the number was converted at a 
revival meeting one night years after the war, 
and on the next morning he mounted a horse 
and rode five miles to see me and say: 
" Douthit, I was induced by that Tory bush- 
whacker to sign that libel about you when I 
knew it was not true, I have been ashamed of 
it ever since, but I could never get courage to 
ask your pardon until now. Will you forgive 
me?" 

I had already forgiven him and everybody 
else, and I think just then I was the unhappier 
man of the two, because I could not remember 
aught for which to ask his forgiveness. 

In 1864; rumors were flying thick that any- 
[ 65 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

one who attempted to take the enrollment for a 
draft would be shot. There were men who 
boasted openly that they would do the mur- 
derous deed. Bloody riots in resisting the en- 
rollment were of frequent occurrence in south- 
em Illinois and Indiana. Several enrolling offi- 
cers had been shot down. All the people seemed 
to be walking on the thin crust of a volcano 
that was ready to burst at any hour. " The 
Knights of the Golden Circle" were drilling 
in sight of my home on the prairie, to resist the 
" tyrant Lincoln," as they called him. I would 
talk and reason with some of my neighbors, but 
many were glum and mum, and would give me 
no chance to talk with them. Under these cir- 
cumstances I was appointed to take the enroll- 
ment in the eastern half of the county. On re- 
ceiving my commission I was offered a company, 
or regiment of soldiers, to be stationed in the 
county, but I objected to their presence, because 
I knew that in the counties where soldiers were 
present there had been riot and bloodshed. I 
was advised to start well armed, but I declined to 
do this. I determined to do the work peaceably, 
or die in the attempt. However, I took the pre- 
caution to change my hat and coat and to ride 
a different horse, from day to day, as I went 

[ 66 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

about the work. This expedient, with the pru- 
dent co-operation of friends in both parties, 
probably saved one enrolling officer from assas- 
sination. Years afterwards some persons con- 
fessed to me that they, with others, had resolved 
on shooting me if I were seen near their homes. 
" I shall always be thankful," said one man to 
me, " that we did not know that you were 
around until you had done the work and gone." 

My plan was to go only to those I thought 
I could trust and get the names of the others 
from the trusty ones. This worked very well, 
except in a few instances where I made the mis- 
take of revealing myself to foes instead of 
friends. Some had read that bushwhacker's 
libel in the papers and they believed their papers 
then more than they did their Bibles. It was 
just such ignorance and partisanship that made 
the Civil War possible. 

The first morning I went out to take the en- 
rollment I went to the house of an old citizen 
who had heard, for he could not read, of the 
rumors about me. He was in the field at work. 
His wife kindly invited me into the house and 
sent the children after their father. He came, 
walking fast, and as he entered the room he 
spatched a gun from out the rack over the door, 

[ 67 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

and holding it up, cried out, with some unquot- 
able expletives : " Now you get out and go 
home in a hurry, or you will be shot ! " 

I arose and replied as mildly as possible, 
under the circumstances, calling him by name. 
" If you wish to shoot me, pop away. But 
I don't want to hurt you, nor anyone else. 
This is all the weapon I carry," showing him 
a little pen-knife, " but let me tell you that I am 
not going home. I am going to do my duty 
to my country, and if I am killed there are 
many thousands to take my place." 

" Well, Jasper," said the man, " I don't want 
to shoot you myself. I couldn't do it, anyhow, 
for your mother's sake. She is a good woman, 
but I am afraid you will be shot if you don't 
quit." 

One night after this there were a dozen shots 
fired through the open door of my house about 
midnight. As the last shot was fired I walked 
to the door in my night-clothes, but the shooters 
dodged behind a hazel-thicket, and nobody was 
hurt. Until that time I carried no firearms and 
kept none in the house, although it was rumored 
and believed by many that I had secreted a lot of 
government arms in or near my house. A few 
days after the shooting I was in Shelbyville, 

[ 68 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

when an old friend and captain in the army, 
who was home on a furlough, persuaded me to 
take home a six-shooter belonging to him, re- 
marking that it was a duty that I owed my 
friends to use it in self-defense, if attacked. 
It was loaded and I carried it home and prac- 
tised with it at an object the size of a man 
about ten steps distant, until all the barrels were 
empty. I missed the object every time, but 
it was not the fault of the revolver. Then, 
laughing at myself for my folly, I laid the re- 
volver away empty and made haste to return it 
to its owner in good order. That was the ex- 
tent of my carnal warfare during all the " un- 
pleasantness." 

This little incident would not be worth men- 
tioning but for the fact that at that time I had 
become the " raw head and bloody bones " of 
the neighborhood. Little children on the road 
would hide behind trees when they saw me 
coming; men would arm themselves to pass by 
my home. To those who know me it seems 
amusing now, but it was serious then. It shows 
how partisan demagoguery, working on ignor- 
ance and prejudice, can inaugurate civil war 
and lead peaceable and well-meaning citizens 
to shed each other's blood. 

[ 69 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Among the many incidents that flood my 
memory, illustrative of the ignorance that pre- 
vailed, I will relate one more. A person who 
had been to Shelbyville and heard some talk 
about peace conventions and Democratic vic- 
tories at elections in New York and Indiana 
passed by my house on his way home, and the 
following conversation occurred. The exact 
words are given, as I wrote them down im- 
mediately afterward: 

" Hello, Douthit ! Have you heard the 
news ? " 

"No, what is it?" 

" Well, we're gwine to have peace ; we've 
pinted a man, Vallandingham, to go and see 
JcfF about arranging it, and, if Old Abe don't 

give him a free pass to , where's the 

place where Jeff Davis lives ? " 

"Richmond, do you mean?" 

"Oh! yes; that's the place. Well, if Old 
Abe don't give Vallandingham a pass to Rich- 
mond, as I was gwine to say, we're gwine to 
succeed (secede) right off. They say New 
York and Indiana have succeeded already. 
Hurrah for Vallandingham ! " 

Many are the memories of encouraging words 
that were whispered or spoken aloud to me in 

[70 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

hours of trial. About this time I preached a 
sermon on " The True Path to Peace," which 
was printed in full in the Slielhy County Union. 
I advocated peace by a vigorous prosecution 
of the inevitable war and by freedom for the 
slaves. It was resolved, by several who were op- 
posed to my views, that I should be summarily 
silenced if I persisted in expressing such senti- 
ments and praying for the President of the 
United States. Accordingly, one bright Sun- 
day morning at the hour I had appointed for 
services, a large crowd of " peace Democrats " 
gathered in and around the little log school 
house. They were armed with shotguns, rifles, 
revolvers, bowie-knives, and heavy clubs. They 
looked sour and surly. The congregation 
gathered and filled the house. I did not know 
any of my friends were armed. Scarcely a 
word was spoken by anyone. The time came to 
begin service. A deathly silence reigned as I 
took my seat in the pulpit. Everybody 
seemed to be asking, "What next?" Just 
then a quiet, conversative man whom I had 
never known to take any active part in any 
meetings, and whom I did not know as being in 
sympathy with me, walked gently up the aisle 
and drawing near to my ear, whispered: 

[ n ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

" Douthit, go on and preach and pray as you 
think right. There are plenty of us to stand 
by you." I was determined to speak my con- 
victions anyhow, and did clear my conscience 
very well that day. Nevertheless, I have 
always regarded that action of so modest and 
quiet a man as a sort of special inspiration. 
I shall never cease to remember with gratitude 
how the best of human nature as well as the 
worst showed itself in those days of trial. 



[ "72 ] 



VI 



During most of this trying time I was 
preaching without ordination. I can hardly 
remember when I did not feel " called " to be 
a preacher. When a mere lad I felt so much 
desire to be a Christian that I would gladly 
have walked a long journey to find a congre- 
gation that would give me fellowship on my 
simple confession of a determined purpose to 
live a Christian life. But all the churches I 
knew required much more as conditions of 
membership, and insisted upon tes's very dif- 
ferent from what I found in the simple teach- 
ings of Jesus. The churches would tell me to 
take the Bible as it reads and follow Christ, and 
then would insist on my taking the Bible as 
they read it, and following their creeds. In 
short, I must be a slave to other people's 
opinions about the Bible and about Christ. I 
could not honestly be that. Therefore, for 
many years I was obliged to walk alone; and I 
would almost have lost faith in all churches and 

[ '73 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

all religion but for a mother's love and saintly 
example. 

When about twenty-one years old I made 
pubhc confession of religion and was baptized, 
kneeling in the waters of the Okaw, at Shelby- 
ville. Rev. Isaac Groves, then pastor of the 
First Methodist Church, performed the cere- 
mony. I worshiped and worked with that 
church for several years. Though never 
yielding formal assent to its articles of faith, I 
was treated as kindly as if I had been a bona 
fide member, and I have ever held that church 
in grateful regard as my foster mother in 
religion. 

Dear old " Auntie " Graham, was the first 
woman I ever heard utter a prayer in public, 
and that prayer powerfully moved me. She 
was the mother or grandmother of the Metho- 
dists in Shelbyville, and was loved by every- 
body. Her speech in meeting was to me a mar- 
velous thing, for I had heard all my life that 
it was wrong for a woman to speak in meeting. 
It was but a short time after that, " Aunt 
Fanny " Gage, then of St. Louis, and later of 
New York City, spoke in Shelbyville against 
strong drink and pleaded most eloquently that 
motlifirs, wives, sisters and daughters should 

[ 74 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

have equal rights before the law with men. I 
became an enthusiastic convert and loved 
" Aunt Fanny " thenceforth as if she were my 
own aunt.* 

How much it helped me to have loved and 
trusted persons to pray for me! This will ex- 
plain how I came to be in some measure instru- 
mental in starting one of the earliest revivals 
in the old Methodist church at Shelbyville. I 
had just started to school in Shelby Academy 
and was a green country boy without anyone 
in school that knew me, or that I knew, ex- 
cept indirectly. Some of the students made 
sport of me and laughed at my awkwardness, 
I had left home too against my father's wish 
and with my mother in trouble. This caused 
me great distress and I prayed God to help me 
to be a Christian and to prove to the family 

* The first library at the beginning of my work at 
Log Church contained several of Mrs. Gage's books. 
They were published by the National Temperance So- 
ciety, New York City. "The Old Still House" was 
one of the books of which I think she was the au- 
thor. The scene of that story seemed to have been 
laid in southern Illinois. At least it was an exact pic- 
ture of things as they had been and were there. The 
book was eagerly read until several copies were worn 
out. No book in our Sunday-school was ever read so 
much and with such good results. 

[ ^5 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

that I had only the best motives in leaving 
home. I was very shy and shrank from public 
notice. It was on a Sunday afternoon that 
I started to school in Shelb^'ville. I walked all 
the way, five miles, through the deep, dark 
■woods, instead of going directly on the state 
road, where people would see me. I called at 
the door of the first house I came to in the edge 
of the town, — it was where the Chicago & East- 
ern Illinois railway depot now stands, — and it 
happened to be the humble home of former coun- 
try acquaintances, namely William B. Jackson 
and his wife. I told them I had come to go to 
school and wanted to work for my board some- 
where. " ^^ery well," they said, " come right 
in, Jasper ; we will have something for you 
to do till you can do better." They were as 
good as their word. The first job they gave me 
was to dig a cellar for them. Mr. Jackson was 
later for many years a Justice of the Peace 
in Shelbyville, and became a charter member, 
and a good one too, of the Unitarian church. 
He passed away years ago, but his widow still 
lives, over eighty-five years of age, a loyal mem- 
ber of my congregation. 

It was in a shy, lonely and homesick mood that 
I went one Sunday night to the Methodist 

[ T'G ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

church. A very boyish looking young man by 
the name of Phillip Minear preached, and the ser- 
mon seemed to be for me. At the close of the 
sermon the preacher said : " If there be any 
here who wish to be Christians and want to be 
prayed for, let them come forward and kneel at 
the altar while the congregation stands and 
sings a hymn." I had slipped into the very 
back seat near the door for I shrank from 
being seen in my plain clothes, but when this 
invitation was given I walked up the aisle and 
knelt at the altar alone, — the only one who 
went up that evening. Fervent prayers were 
made for the strange lad that few knew. I am 
not sure but it was " Auntie " Graham who 
made one of the prayers. Encouraged by the 
move, the minister announced a meeting for 
Monday evening; and on that evening a dozen 
or more, mostly young people, went to the 
altar with me. The meetings continued, and 
grew noisy with shouting, too noisy for me, 
because some of those who shouted did not im- 
press me favorably, and some of the more 
zealous ones disgusted me. I quit going to the 
meetings, though they continued for a month 
or more, and were then transferred to another 
church in the county and held there for 

[ 77 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

several weeks. There were hundreds of con- 
verts. Meantime committees were sent to per- 
suade me to again attend the meetings, but I 
stubbornly refused. Nevertheless, all the while 
I was wrestling in prayer and beseeching God 
for such a miraculous experience as my mother 
and grandparents had. I went to ray mother, 
and she tried to reason with me that it was not 
necessary for me to have exactly her experience. 
She thought I was already a Christian al- 
though I did not know it. My grandfather 
Douthit, whom I loved and trusted, finally said 
to me, " Why, Jasper, you should not make 
such ado, and be asking God to give you the 
same experience that your mother had. St. 
John gives a very simple test of how we may 
know that we have religion. He says : * We 
know that we have passed from death unto life, 
because we love the brethren.' Now," con- 
tinued my grandfather, " if you know that you 
love the brethren, you have got religion." I 
thought a moment, and exclaimed in rapture! 
" Why grandfather, of course I love every- 
hodyr 

A few mornings after that talk with my 
grandfather, I went into a deep glen near Shel- 
byville to pray and thank God for tlie light 

[ 78 ] 




JORDAN UNITARIAN CHURCH 
Dedicated Sept. 29, 1870 




UNION CHURCH AT MODE 

Dedicated July 20, 1873 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

that had come to me. It was winter and the 
trees were bare. But while I prayed, the winter 
woods seemed suddenly glowing with a won- 
drous light and beauty ; and a sweet old hymn 
came to me, giving assurance that God sent 
Jesus to be my Deliverer, Saviour and Best 
Friend, forever. Then what a wonderful peace 
came to me ! This is why the song, " Wonder- 
ful Peace," sung by Bishop McCabe at Lithia 
Springs, is one of my favorite songs. That 
morning as I walked the busy streets to school, 
the faces of all I met — men, women and chil- 
dren — seemed radiant with a light that never 
shone from sun or star. That was a heavenly 
vision which I have tried to obey for over fifty 
years. 

The reader may smile at this religious ex- 
perience and call it a mere fancy. Well, it was 
a mighty real and uplifting fancy to me which 
I hope never to forget, in time or eternity. I 
can but wish that more of those whom I have 
tried to serve would experience such a fancy, 
if it might strengthen and comfort them as it 
has strengthened and comforted me through 
life's hardest battles and sorest trials. 

The majority of people drawn to my min- 
istry have not had strong religious faith, nor 

[ ^^ ] 



JASPER DOUTIIIT'S STORY 

have they been trained to habitual pubHc wor- 
ship. On the contrary they have been ahen- 
ated from the church and, except in a few con- 
spicious instances, they have been honest doubt- 
ers, agnostics, and more intellectual and material- 
istic than spiritual. To preach to such people 
is harder work than to preach to spiritually- 
minded people and habitual church-goers. It 
draws on the nerves and vitality, unless the 
preacher is might}' in faith and full of the 
Holy Spirit. I remember once at Meadville, 
President Livennore spoke to me of this fact. 
" But," continued he, " such people are just 
the ones who need earnest. Christian, Unitarian 
preaching." Preaching to such people made 
me crave the fellowship of deeply spiritual reli- 
gious people. 

When asked how I became a Unitarian I re- 
ply that I suppose, like Topsy, " I jist growed." 
Though most of my ancestors were Calvinists and 
a few were Methodists, for several generations 
back, yet I cannot remember the time when I 
was not Unitarian in principle — that is, Uni- 
tarian in what to me to-day is the broadest, best 
sense of the word. I would emphasize the 
unite, and care less for the arian or ism, but we 
must have some name in this world in order to 

[ 80 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

do honest business. I became identified with 
the Unitarians simply because they were the 
only body of Christian believers, so far as I 
knew, who would ordain me and give me perfect 
freedom to preach the gospel as God gave me to 
see it, without dictation by Pope, Synod, or 
Conference. The Methodist people with whom 
I first taught and worshiped gave me, indeed, 
the liberty to speak in their class meetings ; and 
when teaching in the primary department of 
the Shelby Academy, I made appointments to 
preach in the school-houses round about. I 
was preaching at least five years before receiv- 
ing ordination in 1862. But there were some 
churches and school-houses where I was not al- 
lowed to preach. Therefore, the year before 
the Civil War began, I solicited funds and 
helped build an indejjendent meeting-house in 
the woods four miles east and south of Shelby- 
ville, which we named " Liberty," and which was 
free for religious and other public meetings. 
Here I tried to preach, and organized a Sun- 
day-school. That was the house in which the 
" Knights of the Golden Circle " held their meet- 
ings. It vras burned soon afterwards. The 
burden of my preaching in that house was for 
Union, Liberty, Charity, Temperance and 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Righteousness in religion and through the 
nation. 

The preachers I heard fifty years ago had 
*' an itch for disputation " and heresy hunting, 
so that congregations were spht upon such 
questions as whether God made the Devil or 
the Devil made himself. There was bitter con- 
troversy and turning each other out of church 
on such questions as communion and baptism, 
regardless of how pure the character of the 
heretic might be. I thought that was all wrong, 
but I dare say I sometimes made the mistake of 
showing some of the same spirit which I con- 
demned; for I have never found it difficult to 
show, on occasion, the requisite amount of in- 
dignation against what I believed to be wrong ; 
while to " speak the truth in love," to be gen- 
tle amidst " an evil and perverse generation " — 
is not so easy. 

My wife had often heard Rev. Thomas Went- 
worth Higginson speak, and she admired him 
and Theodore Parker, and told me that they 
were Unitarians. She thought the Unitarians 
would ordain me to preach, taking none but 
Christ for Master and Leader in religion. 
That was what I wanted. Accordingly I wrote 
Mr. Higginson. He replied in a very kind 

[ 82 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

letter, and referred me to Robert Collyer, " a 
noble man and a minister-at-large in Chicago. 
I don't know how radical he is, but he is liberal, 
which is better." Soon a hearty letter came 
from Brother Collyer, saying : " Come and 
see me, and go with me to our Western Confer- 
ence at Detroit, Michigan." There on June 
22, 1862, I was ordained to the Christian min- 
istry. Moncure D. Conway, Charles G. Ames, 
Thomas J. Mumford, George W. Hosmer, and 
Robert Collyer took part in the service. Then 
I went back to my own country, preaching in 
groves and school-houses, for I was not allowed 
in the churches — till worn in body and sick at 
heart, I went again to see Brother Collyer. He 
looked at me and said : *' My dear fellow, you 
are so thin I doubt if you can stand it to go 
through four years at Meadville, and I am 
afraid it will be a wet blanket to your enthu- 
siasm, but you shall have a chance." Rev. J. 
G. Forman, then minister at Alton, Illinois, and 
Secretary of the Western Sanitary Commission, 
joined heartily with Collyer in sending me to 
Meadville. So I went. 

The three years spent at the Meadville Theo- 
logical School are remembered as the happiest 
and most helpful period of my life. My wife 

[ 83 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

and our two older children made a pleasant 
home for me, and all the associations of the 
school inspired me to do and be my best. I do 
not remember so much of what I learned from 
the text-books, but there is a flood of precious 
memories of the spirit and life that pervaded 
the school. Personal contact with such peo- 
ple as President A. A. Livermore, Doctors 
George W. Hosmer and Austin Craig (the 
genius and saint of the " Christian Connec- 
tions"), Professors George L. Cary and Fred- 
erick Huidekoper, and such fellow students as 
Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Edward A. Horton, 
George H. Young, Isaac Porter, David Cronyn, 
Charles W. Wendte and the rest meant much 
to me, as well as the almost daily fellowship, the 
religious study and practice, the social worship 
and song, and Sunday service at church of 
such a minister as Richard INIetcalf, whose ser- 
mon on " The Abiding IMemory " w ent so deep 
into my heart that I shall never forget it. 
Then the uniform courtesy — the " kindness 
kindly expressed " — of the patrons of the 
school, the Shippens, the Huidekopers and 
others — and especially have I often thanked 
God for INIiss Elizabeth Huidekoper's kindness 
to my family, and her helping hand from that 

[ 8^ ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

day till now, when at ninety years she is pro- 
moted and crowned forever among the bene- 
factors of that school on God's hill — all, all 
abide in my memory as a living picture of 
" sweetness and light." I know there were 
cloudy days and nights of suffering ; and at last 
I was obliged, because of my mother's distress, 
to go home to her instead of being present with 
my class at graduation. Nevertheless, memory 
now only notes the cloudless hours and cheerful 
faces. 

While a student at Meadville Divinity School 
I received what I regard as one of the highest 
honors of my life, one for which I was cer- 
tainly not qualified. I was offered the Presi- 
dency of the United Brethren College at West- 
field, Clark County, Illinois. In scholarship I was 
not prepared for the position, but the United 
Brethren and I had been welded together by a 
furnace blast that tried most souls in the war 
for the Union and against slavery and intem- 
perance. We had been emphasizing the unite 
for several years, so that we considered our- 
selves as one in spirit and purpose. I think 
it must have been from this fact that the Uni- 
tarian missionary was thus honored by the 
United Brethren. I remember that when I con- 

[ 85 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

suited our beloved President Livermore about 
the position offered me, he smilingly said: 
" Oh, Brother Douthit, you must finish the 
course here first, and then, if they want you, 
you may accept that position." But Westfield 
College has had better presidents than I could 
have made. It has grown and Is now one of 
the most liberal Christian educational institu- 
tions in southern Illinois. 

Soon after graduating at Meadville in 1867, 
I was called to the Unitarian Society in Prince- 
ton, Bureau County, Illinois. This society was 
a part of the congregation of the Rev. Owen 
Lovejoy, member of Congress and brother of 
the abolition martyr, Elijah P. Lovejoy. 
While at Princeton I first made the acquaint- 
ance of the late Carl Schurz. He was engaged 
to lecture there, and on the day of his lecture 
in the evening I met him in a public hall where 
a traveling phrenologist had hung on the wall 
likenesses to illustrate a series of lectures. Mr. 
Schurz was interested in phrenology. We had 
a pleasant talk about the pictures, among which 
was one of Bismarck, who happened to be the 
subject of his lecture that evening. I had 
learned to admire and trust Mr. Schurz when 
Lincoln was first nominated for President, and 

[ 86 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

I had been greatly helped by the example of his 
heroic life and noble character. At Princeton 
I had also a very pleasant and most helpful ac- 
quaintance with William Cullen Bryant, the 
poet. Three of his brothers were members of 
my congregation, and my wife had been a con- 
tributor to the poet's paper. Before this ac- 
quaintance with the author of " Thanatopsis " 
I had read and thought more of Thomas Car- 
lyle than of Emerson ; but Mr. Bryant called 
my attention to the fact that Emerson was al- 
ways sunny, sweet and optimistic, whereas Car- 
lyle was often cynical and pessimistic. I 
needed that lesson then. In my first efforts 
for reform I was liable to be faultfinding, to 
emphasize the error more than the truth, and 
under strong excitement was disposed to ridicule 
and be sarcastic. My speech was too often 
more in the spirit of Carlyle than of Emer- 
son — perhaps influenced more by the law 
thundered from Sinai than by the spirit of the 
Christ. I went fishing for men as Mr. Beecher 
once said some ministers did. It was as if a 
fisherman with a good outfit, hook, line and 
bait, should go along the bank of the stream 
or pond and thrash the water with his rod, cry- 
ing " Bite or be damned." The great apostle's 

[ 87 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

advice was: "Speak tlie truth in love." It 
is possible to speak the truth in the spirit of 
Satan. Jesus said, " Let your light so shine 
that others seeing your good works may glo- 
rify your Father which is in Heaven." Dr. 
Wilham G. Eliot once said to me : "I think 
we should read that saying of Jesus with the 
emphasis on so." That is, let your light shine 
in such a spirit and manner as will show more 
of God's truth and love. I had a fine illustra- 
tion to the point a year after that lesson from 
Bryant. I was preaching in Mattoon, Illinois, 
and Mr. Emerson filled the pulpit for me one 
Sunday. His subject was " Immortality." 
All who heard him praised the discourse, be- 
cause, of course, none of us wanted to be 
thought unable to understand the great man. 
There was a little six-year-old girl there who 
joined the chorus of praise. Her grown sister 
expressed surprise, saying : " Why, child, 
what do you know about that sermon.? You 
couldn't understand a word of it." To which 
the little sister made quick reply : " Suppose 
I didn't understand the words, I knew the 
sermon was good ; for I could see it in his face." 
When excited and moved with indignation at 
wrong, I have often felt rebuked by the memory 

[ 88 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

of the following words of Charles G. Ames in 
his " charge " when I was ordained. He said : 
*' Take heed to your spirit and temper, that 
you speak the truth only in love. The hour 
Cometh when looking in the Master's eye of 
tender, awful goodness, you shall judge it bet- 
ter to have spoken three words in charity than 
three thousand words in disdainful sharpness of 
wit." The longer I live the more I feel the need 
of pity rather than blame for the erring and 
sinful. 

I spent three months at Princeton and then 
went back to my own country. The change 
was a hard trial for both my wife and me. I 
resigned at Princeton in the face of the unani- 
mous protest of the members of the society and 
also in opposition to the wish of some dear 
friends like Robert Collyer. Indeed it seemed 
a foolish move to most of my friends to give 
up a good salary and pleasant post and come 
to a region where I must serve without salary 
and struggle with poverty. But God and my 
wife and my sorely troubled mother knew why 
I felt this to be the loudest call on earth to me. 
Aside from the call to general mission work, 
there were strong reasons then why I should be 
near my distressed mother, who the doctors said 

[ 89 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

could remain but a little longer in that body 
of pain. She had grieved because of my ab- 
sence for three years at Meadville, and now she 
begged that her eldest son would stay with her 
to the last and be a sort of guardian to her 
younger children when she was called away. 
No wonder some dear Unitarian friends were 
much disappointed, if not vexed, to have me 
leave such a position as I had in Princeton for 
this unpromising field. They did not know all 
the cause, and I did not feel at liberty to tell 
it then. My mother and brothers and sisters 
helped me all they could. They persuaded my 
father to let me have a little patch of ground 
to cultivate, and on which Mrs. Douthit could 
raise chickens and turkeys. I built a shanty 
which we afterwards used as a hen-house and 
camped in it until my brothers helped me build 
a house of three rooms, where we lived from 
1869 to 1875, when we moved to Shelby ville. 
Here we lived in a little old house till the Hon- 
orable George Partridge, of St. Louis, joined 
with friends in Shelbyville in helping us to buy 
the brick parsonage by the church. There was 
left to us by some of those who took shares in 
this house, a debt of twelve hundred dollars un- 
paid and secured by mortgage. This pressed 

[ 90 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

heavily on us when I was in the midst of my anti- 
saloon crusade and my salary was cut down. It 
was then that the late Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, a 
most heroic and eloquent temperance reformer, 
was called to plead for home protection in Shel- 
byville. She learned of the mortgage on our 
house, and our pinch, and quietly went to work, 
and with the assistance of local friends and 
others at a distance she gave my wife and me 
the greatest surprise of our lives — a warranty 
deed to the house free of all incumbrances. I 
mention this fact because of an erroneous im- 
pression abroad, that my wife and I got into 
debt and so got that mortgage on the house. 
We did not. We only assumed the debt that 
other shareholders incurred and failed to pay. 
But we did mortgage this house later in the 
effort to found Lithia Springs Chautauqua. 



[ 91 ] 



VII 



My mission work began in the old " Hard- 
shell " Baptist meeting-house, later called the 
Log Church, where my mother had taken me 
when I was a babe, and held me in her lap dur- 
ing the long services — the sennon often being 
two hours long. It was in the midst of a dis- 
trict that had always been destitute of any other 
church privileges. For many miles around 
there were no other churches excepting in Shel- 
byville, five miles away. 

The Predcstinarian or " Hardshell " Baptists 
were the first people who held religious 
services in that region. Their theology was 
Calvinism gone to seed. They taught that 
God had decreed from the foundation of the 
world a fixed number who were to be saved and 
a fixed number who were to be cast into Hell 
forever, without any regard to good or bad 
works. Man had no will of his own. Hence 
to make any effort to improve or reform or 
train children in the way they should go was 

[ 92 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

folly, if not blasphemy. The only thing to do 
was to sit still or drift, and let God do it all. 

I state this old Baptist doctrine just as I un- 
derstood it when I was a boy. I did not be- 
lieve it, but I believed in my mother. My 
mother and grandmother planted Bible seeds in 
my mind and heart that choked out the doctrine 
of the preachers. It has been one of the chief 
regrets of my life that I was not made more 
familiar with the Bible in my early youth so 
that I could quote it easily. It would have 
been a great advantage to me among the people 
for whom I have labored. I once asked Ralph 
Waldo Emerson how he would convince these 
people of the sin and evil of slavery and strong 
drink, especially when they hold to the Bible's 
infallibility and quoted scripture in support of 
slavery. He replied promptly : " I would 
quote the same authority against slavery, be- 
cause to them it is the highest." I did this with 
excellent effect. 

The do-nothing doctrine of the " Hardshell " 
Baptists caused them to vehemently oppose all 
missionary efforts, Sunday-schools and temper- 
ance reform and an educated ministry. All 
that saved my mother's children, so far as I 
can see, was the fact that she did not practise 

[ 93 ] 



JASPER DOITTHIT'S STORY 

the " don't care " doctrine with her children, 
but, bj constant precept and example, taught us 
to be good and do good. She and my father 
were ever sajing to their children, " Whatever 
you do, you must always speak the truth, be 
honest with everybody, and go to meeting 
(church) and behave." 

It would hardly be just for me to omit say- 
ing that while my Calvinistic forefathers held 
to doctrines and practised customs which in the 
light of the present day I believe to be wrong, 
yet they were thoroughly sincere in their faith. 
" I would rather you would differ from me, if 
you must in order to be honest, than to pretend 
to believe what you do not." Thus my grand- 
father would often say to me. They were more 
true to the light God gave them than some of 
their descendants who claim greater and better 
light. These Baptists called a member who was 
strong in the faith " hard," which meant sternly 
orthodox ; and a member that was disposed to be 
liberal they called " soft." My mother was 
reckoned as " soft." When I first told her with 
joy that I had found a people who would take 
me in and ordain me to preach the gospel, she 
asked, " What do they believe? " When I told 
her, as nearly as I could, she exclaimed: 

[ 94 ] 




MR. DOUTHIT ABOUT 1870 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

" Why, my child, that is what I always believed. 
I joined the Baptists because I wanted so much 
to belong to meeting, and there was nothing 
else to join." 

It was naturally decreed that a church such 
as I have described should die. The factions 
ground together like the upper and nether mill- 
stones, having no grist, till they ground them- 
selves to pieces. Their divisions and subdivi- 
sions were endless on questions that nobody on 
earth knows anything about. The split that 
was the beginning of the end of the old church 
in this locality, was on what they called " the 
two-seed doctrine " — the seed of good and evil. 
One side held that God made Himself and that 
the Devil made himself, and each of them had 
a separate kingdom. The other side contended 
that God created Himself and the Devil also. 
The church split on that question, and that 
about ended it in that region. My mother's last 
pastor and a dozen or more of the churches of 
the Southern Illinois Baptist Association went 
over to the Universalists ; for their good hearts 
made them feel that if God had decreed any- 
thing, he must have decreed that all should be 
saved. 

It is hard to conceive of a community with 
[ 95 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

so great a prejudice against giving money for 
religious purposes as prevailed in this locality. 
It was taught to be especially wrong to give 
money for church or missionary purposes. I 
knew a well-to-do farmer, a good fellow in 
many respects, who boasted near the end of his 
long life that he had never given a dollar to a 
church or a preacher. And yet he asked me to 
visit him at his death-bed and I preached his 
funeral sermon. I had many years before been 
asked to pray at the death-bed of his wife. I 
have often paid livery hire to serve at funerals 
w^here the bereaved parties seemed to think the 
honor of being invited to officiate, and a " thank 
ye," were reward enough. I have thought so 
too, because it gave me a hearing among many 
people to whom I could never otherwise get a 
chance to preach. 

I have known professed church people, good 
honest fellows as the world goes, who were sup- 
posed to possess fifty or seventy-five thousand 
dollars, who seemed to think they were doing 
generously to give ten or twenty dollars a year 
for the support of their faith. So much de- 
pends upon early training and the custom of 
the community. It requires much grace, tact 
and generous example to change such habits — 

[ 96 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

often more than I have been able to illustrate. 
The following editorial appeared in the 
Shelby County Union as late as the year 1870. 
It illustrates the prejudice that even then pre- 
vailed against giving money for religious ob- 
jects. The Union said: 

" A few Sundays ago we witnessed the taking 
up of a collection in a church. It was at the 
session of a Sunday-school. One hundred and 
fifty, more or less, were present. Some shook 
their heads, some appeared too busily engaged 
to notice the hat when passed, while others dived 
into their pockets and made a ' dry haul ' — it 
may be a few tobacco crumbs. All but one lone 
man, — that was the minister. The boy who 
carried the empty hat looked at that one with 
something like mingled pity and dread, and then 
reluctantly presented the hat, and the minister 
was the only contributor among those one hun- 
dred and fifty poverty-stricken souls. The Su- 
perintendent of the Sunday-school had to say 
that the weekl}' distribution of Sunday-school 
papers must stop for want of a few dimes nec- 
essary to partly pay for the same. And yet 
harvests are plenty and business brisk." 

But there is a brighter sequel to that story, 
for the Sunday-school papers were not long 
discontinued. As soon as the want was made 
known, the Unitarian Sunday-school Society, 

[ 9^ ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

gave enough copies of The Dayspr'mg to 
gladden all the children's hearts and brighten 
the homes round about. Some " Hardshell " 
Baptist parents made their children return the 
papers and said they should not come to the 
Sunday-school if they were allowed to read any- 
thing but the Bible, but there were other par- 
ents who sent money to help pay for the 
" pretty little paper." I remember one pious 
old grandma who lived in a cabin in the deep 
woods and who walked one day over two miles 
through a snowstorm to our home on the 
prairie. She came to bring " two bits " (twenty- 
five cents), which she had wrapped carefully 
in a bandana handkerchief, to pay for The 
Dayspring for her grandchildren. I have 
been happily surprised in recent years to find 
files of that little paper preserved to this day 
as a precious treasure in some homes of this 
mission. 

While some well-to-do people at a distance, 
knowing the character of the work and the 
need, have volunteered aid and seemed happy 
to do so again and again, yet in this vicinity 
it has been wage workers and persons of little 
means who as a rule have been the most cheer- 
ful and generous co-woi'kers in the mission. 

[ 98 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Many have been the times in my extremity that 
some of the poorest in this world's goods have 
caused me to thank God and take courage for 
renewed efforts. They have helped with their 
own hands to build meeting-houses, to build the 
tabernacle and library chapel at Lithia, and to 
dig down hills and make roads in the park. 
In many instances they have given a share of 
their wages to support the Chautauqua. 

For example, while I write this story, a 
young man comes to say, " I will give half my 
wages for a month to help support the Chau- 
tauqua for 1908." A hired girl, on learning 
that the Chautauqua might not be held next 
year for want of funds, says : " I will give 
$10 of my wages rather than not have it go 
on." A poor man and an excellent helper in 
Chautauqua work, whose home is fifty miles 
away, says : " I have heard that you are hav- 
ing a hard tug to continue the Chautauqua. I 
will help you all I can free of charge. I am 
going to rally a company to come over and help 
you this year for the love of it." A poor ten- 
ant farmer who has a family and a hard strug- 
gle to make ends meet comes to say : " There 
are several of us fellows who can't give much, 
but we will give ten dollars apiece to help out the 

.[ 99 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Chautauqua, because it is doing our folks so 
much good." 

Several times in the history of this mission, 
when, for want of support, I was on the eve 
of answering a louder call, some of the poor 
people of my parish, without knowing that I 
had decided to leave, have come to the rescue. 
For instance, once while we lived in the little 
home on the prairie, my wife and I were ready 
to give up, but just then there came a poor 
farmer in a two-horse wagon with a load of 
chickens, sacks of flour, potatoes, and other 
family necessities and said : " I know you 
must be having a hard scrabble to get along, 
but I do hope you will stick by us, for we can- 
not do without you." 

Another time, in Shelbyville, I had written 
my resignation when one of the poorest families 
of my congregation did an act which moved the 
hearts of those in better circumstances to make 
me feel obliged to reconsider my decision. 

I will relate one very singular experience. 
It was during one of the darkest hours in our 
battle at Lithia. It seemed that we must give 
up and surrender our home and everything but 
honor. We were at the bottom of the meal 
tub, and my wife and I had determined to live 

[ 100 ] . 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

on spare diet rather than incur more debt. In 
that critical hour, there came to our door one 
dark night a woman of a popular church, a 
woman who had the name of being stingy and 
whose husband I had tried hard to rescue from 
drink. This widow did not know of our want. 
She called my wife and said : " The Lord has 
been telling me all day that before I slept I 
must come and give you some money. I don't 
know why it is so, but I can't sleep till I have 
given you this ; but you must never mention my 
name to anyone but your husband." Then she 
said " Good-night." She had given my wife 
twenty-five dollars. In less than a month after 
that event some Unitarian friends helped us to 
push the battle at Lithia for another year. By 
such seemingly special providences we were kept 
in the battle. 

But I must go back to the early days of the 
mission. One Sunday afternoon in the Log 
Church — after two of the Baptist preachers 
had preached an hour and a half or two hours 
each, and had denounced Sunday-schools and 
new-fangled college preachers, I arose, and an- 
nounced a meeting the next Sunday for the or- 
ganization of a Sunday-school. The novel an- 
nouncement created a sensation ; and there was 

[ 101 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

a crowd on hand, mostly children of laborers 
working on the railroad, now the Big Four. 
We had a big Sunday-school. Then my wife 
started a subscription school, and had a house 
full, the greater number being Irish-Catholic 
children. I held meetings every night for sev- 
eral weeks. The old house was crammed and 
jammed, running over with people. But it 
could stand the pressure. It was built of hewn 
logs of big trees, and had enough timber in it 
to make half a dozen houses of its size. 

The crowd that gathered at the Sunday- 
school hour did not all come from religious 
motives. Sometimes a few of them came to 
settle quarrels that had begun at a dance or at 
the races. It was not a very great novelty to 
have a fight in the yard or the road with knives 
and pistols. Once in Sunday-school, while I 
was expounding the Beatitudes, a rough man 
who was fired with drink, rose and said, " That's 

all a lie." Pie further said he had come 

there to whip the abolition preacher, and he 
was going to do it right away. The fellow was 
angry with me, because, knowing of the dis- 
tress of his family, I had warned saloon keep- 
ers that I would prosecute them if they let him 
have liquor. He had come to take vengeance 

[ 102 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

upon me. A half dozen boys remonstrated 
with him, and when he persisted in his determi- 
nation and rushed for the pulpit, it became nec- 
essary to deal with him less gently. In spite 
of his struggles, the boys succeeded in taking 
him bodily and placing him on the back of his 
horse, and, on promise of good behavior, he 
was permitted to go his way. Then we called 
back into the house the scared and scattered 
women and children, for there was only one adult 
man there, and all sang with spirit and under- 
standing a rousing temperance song. 

My wife and I lived at first in a little shanty, 
about ten by twelve. We tried to live on what 
she earned by teaching and what I could raise 
by cultivating a little farm. The whole com- 
munity, except the Catholics, were " dead set " 
against paying a preacher anything. A for- 
eigner, however, who became a regular attend- 
ant at my meetings, came to me one day and 
said, " I don't see how you live without pay. 
Come down to my house and I will give you a 
little sweetening to help you along." He gave 
me a big jug of sorghum molasses. That was 
my first year's salary and my first pay as 
preacher in that mission. The next year the 
same man paid me five dollars, this being the first 

[ 103 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

money I received as salary from the people 
to whom I was preaching. This man was not 
noted for his generosity, hut he had been trained 
to give for the support of tlie gospel. Then an 
old fellow who hailed from Nova Scotia, and 
who was inclined to scoff at the church, said: 
" I find that since these preaching services have 
begun my chickens have not been stolen so much, 
and life and limb are safer. I for one am wil- 
ling to chip in to help keep the thing a-going." 
And so he headed a subscription, and went 
with it to Shelbyville, five miles away. Thus 
my third year's salary was increased to about 
fifty dollars, although my wife made much more 
by raising chickens and turkeys than I did by 
preaching. 



[ 104 ] 



VIII 

In the first years of my work at the Log 
Church, 1867 and 1868, I began to preach in 
Mattoon. At first the Methodist and Cum- 
berland Presbyterian churches were kindly 
opened to me ; and then the public halls. Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, the Concord sage, gave me a 
labor of love in Union Hall, on Sunday, Dec. 
15, 1868, and on the following Sunday, Dec. 
22 — Forefathers' Day — Unity Church of 
Liberal Christians was organized in Mattoon. 

I also preached at the school-houses round 
about, tried to cultivate a little farm of twenty 
acres, and edited a department in the Shelby- 
ville Union, called " The Preaching Comer." 
This was, of course, purely a labor of love, 
but it required the best of two days of each 
week for preparing copy, reading proof and 
going, on foot or horseback, to and from Shel- 
byville. 

I started also to build a new chapel in my 
[ 105 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

own district and the following letter to my 
brother tells how it was done: 

"April ITth, 1870. 
" Dear Brother George, — 

" I am overwhelmed with work. Is that news 
to you? This morning I awoke at two o'clock, 
and the more I thought of what there is to do 
to-day the more I couldn't sleep. Most that 
presses now to be done is for other folks and 
'pro bono publico. I find the Chapel, Oak 
Grove, will go unfinished another summer (the 
enterprise had lagged through one summer) un- 
less I drop all and go right to work at it. 
Hence it comes to pass that I strike out as soon 
as daylight to hire a plasterer, see that the mor- 
tar is mixed, etc., etc. I expect to go right on 
and foot the bill myself, if I can sell anything ; 
and when it is ready I'll send for CoUyer to dedi- 
cate it and then ask the assembled people to pay 
for their church, and if they don't do it, I will 
resign in a farewell discourse, give them my pri- 
vate opinion of a people who appreciate the gos- 
pel enough to permit a preacher to build a 
church and pay for the privilege of preaching 
In it. / am in earnest.^ 



j> 



This Oak Grove Chapel stood within a few 
feet of the spot where our primitive log school 
house stood sixty-eight years ago. There we 

[ 106 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

little bojs with nothing to wear but coarse, 
home-spun tow shirts, a single garment, hang- 
ing below the knees like the children's night- 
gowns now, first went to school, and said over 
and over again every day for six months, our 
A B C's. About a mile from the same place 
I taught my first subscription school when I 
was eighteen years old. Robert Collyer came 
down from Chicago to the dedication of this 
chapel. It was a novel occasion — the first of 
the kind in that region. I will let him tell of 
this, his first visit to the mission. The follow- 
ing is an extract from a report he gave to The 
Liberal Christian, a weekly paper edited by Dr. 
Bellows, published in New York City : 

" Jasper L. Douthit's new church in Shelby 
County, Illinois, was dedicated on Thursday, 
the 29th of September, 1870. It was a beauti- 
ful and touching sight to me altogether. The 
church is called the Oak Grove Church. It is 
in the center of a noble piece of woodland, 
buried so deep there that they have had to cut a 
road two miles long through the timber on one 
side, and another a little shorter in another di- 
rection. But the place is central in the thinly- 
settled region over which Mr. Douthit has the 
care of souls. It is also close to the secluded 
cemetery of the countryside — a sweet spot as 

[ 107 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

ever the sun shone upon — silent above ground 
almost as below. The church itself is a nice, 
seemly stinicture of the meeting-house order 
of architecture. The seats and pulpit are of 
black walnut, rough but solid. The whole thing 
is home-made ; that is, by Mr. Douthit and the 
rough-and-ready fanners and others interested 
in the movement, together with the help of a 
devoted carpenter, who gave a great deal of his 
labor. Contributions of work and money have 
been made by members of almost all the churches 
in that region, by Jews also, and a few out- 
siders. It fell to my lot to preach the dedica- 
tion sermon. A Lutheran minister read, ' The 
wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad 
for them,' and offered the prayer. They listen 
down in ' Egypt ' to the preaching as if it did 
them good. I left the manuscript in the saddle 
bags and ventured to speak without it. Said 
very little about points of difference and all I 
could about the great things all Christians hold 
in common. They have the quaint old Quaker 
fashion down there of sitting separatel^^ — the 
men on the one side, and the women on the other. 
The women wore sunbonnets, and some of the 
men were without their coats. Rustic all of 
them and rough, but good to look at, — very. 
Mr. Douthit had one great load on his mind — 
the lifting of the debt. It was only about two 
hundred dollars, but it was appalling to him be- 
cause they had all done what they could who had 
the thing at heart. He told me afterwards, 

[ 108 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

with a solemn face, that if it hadn't been paid 
he had made up his mind to sell his only mare. 
Mr. Douthit made a most effective address at 
the close of the sermon, and told the people what 
he wanted them to do. There was a little spurt 
of generosity, then a pause, as when a ship 
about to be launched slides almost down to the 
water and then will go no further; but we put 
our shoulders to it and started afresh ; got warm 
to the work; went through the whole congre- 
gation, one by one, and ended by getting almost 
half as much again as was wanted, making the 
minister about as happy as a minister can be. 

" I can hardly tell how much good Mr. 
Douthit has done in that region. It is to me 
simply wonderful. Religious men and women 
of other persuasions join with him and help in 
the singing and prayer. His brothers, splen- 
did, stalwart fellows, are on his side, and main- 
tain his cause. He goes to Mattoon once a 
month when he is strong enough, and has a 
small hearing there ; writes a religious column 
for one of the papers, and has a small farm be- 
sides, but I doubt whether he is much of a far- 
mer, and small blame to him. Is it worth my 
while to say that his best helper and inspirer 
after God, is his wife, a small slender woman 
from Abington, in Massachusetts, who is proud 
and glad in her quiet way, of the good work. 
She works herself, also, I fear beyond her 
strength, but does not seem to know it ; a poet 
and a thinker, doing her own housework, a 

[ 109 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

woman's work on a farm, caring for her little 
brood of children, and almost not regretting 
that she is five or six hundred miles from a 
mountain and eight or nine hundred from the 
sea." 

So much for Robert Collyer's report. It 
was Mr. Collyer's eloquence and running fire 
of drollery and happy anecdotes that completely 
captured the crowd. At first some persons left 
the house with a grumble. This provoked Coll- 
yer to a witty comment which I cannot recall, 
but to the effect that it did not disturb him for 
little children to run out of church while he 
talked, but grown folks ought to have learned 
to behave better when a stranger came to do 
them good. Then some sang and others 
laughed, and the grumbling fellows returned to 
see what was up. There was soon a broad smile 
on their faces and they shoved their hands into 
their pockets and " shelled out " their loose 
change. I remember one dear old woman who 
wore a frilled cap with a sunbonnet over it. I 
had known her for a lifetime, but had never 
known her to give a cent for any such thing. 
She looked glum and cross when Mr. Collyer 
began his plea, but soon she smiled and pulled 
out of her pocket a little bag of silver and 

[ 110 ] 




OAK GROVE CHAPEL 
With one of the oldest burying-grounds in that part of the country 




FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH, SHELBTVILLE 

Dedicated May 8, 1876 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

emptied it in the collection. Blessed be her 
memory ! 

Not long after that I was offered the ap- 
pointment under President Grant's administra- 
tion to an Indian Agency, which I declined, and 
most of my friends thought I was foolish to do 
so, just as they thought when I declined the 
post-office under Lincoln. 

On my birthday, Monday morning, October 
10, 1870, I wrote my brother George who was 
at Antioch College: 



** My Dear Brother, — 

" I want you to help me. Since Collyer was 
Avith me and is gone I feel even more lonely than 
before. Perhaps the excitement and wear and 
tear were too much for me. At any rate I have 
had a low, sad time for a week or more, and like 
Elijah under the Juniper tree, I have placed my 
face on the earth and asked the Lord to let me 
die and go where the wicked trouble us no more 
and the weary are at rest. Of course, I know 
this is not the right spirit, even while I can't feel 
differently. ' O God, be pitiful ! ' I would 
write to you about our dedication, but that I 
was surfeited with it and the troubles it brought, 
and do not want to think about it much. We 

had trouble with the family again about 

it. They didn't want Collyer to preach the 
dedication sermon at all unless he would preach 

[ 111 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

it on Sunday, and voted against it, although a 
large majority voted for him to come as he did. 
The day appointed it rained and we postponed 
till next diiy. Collyer gave a most rousing talk 
that made eyes water with mirth and sorrow 
alternately, and when we asked for help to 
clear the church of debt we got by pledges on 
paper two hundred and ninety-five dollars ! A 
most miraculous draught ! It will pay the debt 
wholly and partly pay for a bell for the chapel. 
I never beheld such generosity before. Only 
three persons in the congregation said no! 
The others seemed glad to give because Robert 
Collyer asked them. I long for the days when 
you will be with me; but still I pray you press 
on at Antioch and graduate. Write letters to 
your brothers and sisters exhorting them to 
fidelity and to be good Christians. Why don't 
you have the Index sent direct to you and 
save me the trouble of mailing ? Pardon me for 
saying that I think it is not just the thing 
which you need to read. You had better by 
far read Beecher's Lecture Room Talks, etc. 
Write me a good long letter. May God bless 

^ ' " Affectionately, 

" Jasper." 

*' P. S. — This is my birthday. I am 36 
years old and some wiser if no better. Give my 
love to Dr. Hosmer and tell him I often think 
of him." 

[ 11^ ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

In my diary of Thursday, Jan. 5th, 1871, 
appears this entry : 

" Elder Ellis closed his labors with us Mon- 
day night. He presented a subscription at the 
close of meeting for my support for the year 
1871. Mostly young folks were present. 
They came up with remarkable alacrity and put 
down their names, for from one to ten dollars — 
only three of the latter. It amounted to sixty- 
two dollars on paper, on the spot, and most of 
the members of the society, strange to say, were 
absent. In fact this was subscribed largely 
by those who gave nothing last year. Ellis 
talked to them very plainly. Said he, ' I am 
his ( Jasper's ) bishop and he shall go away from 
here if you don't support him better than you 
have done.' " 



[ 113 ] 



IX 



I remember that for the first twenty or 
twenty-five years of my life there were no 
funeral services whatever at the burial of the 
dead, not even a hymn or prayer, throughout 
the country in which I was reared and began 
preaching. It was the custom to have a funeral 
preached some months or years after the death. 
Then the preacher made no reference to the 
dead but a long harangue mostly of scripture 
quotations to prove his pet doctrine and comfort 
the elect. I recall nothing tender and uplifting 
that was spoken on such occasions, and yet there 
was something in the deep sincerity of the 
preacher and the general spirit of the service 
that struck me with awe and made me want to 
be good. This custom of no service at funerals 
shocked new-comers. I have heard Yankees and 
Irish-Catholics exclaim : " What a queer peo- 
ple these ! They bury their dead as if they 
were no more than dogs ! " But now for many 
years I have not known any people in all this 
country so " queer " as not to have a funeral 

[ 114 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

service at the burial ; so that even those who 
habitually neglect the church and lead godless 
lives never bury one of their family without 
calling a minister to officiate. 

I have said I never witnessed a funeral service 
at a burial till I was over twenty years old. It 
was on the death of the husband of my father's 
sister. While his body lay in the coffin at their 
home and the mourners had gathered to follow 
it to the grave, my aunt begged me to read 
some comforting scripture and make a prayer. 
But after that first service at my uncle's death 
to this present time I have ministered at the 
burial of all my uncles and aunts, in this vicin- 
ity, and nearly all my relatives in this locality 
on my father's side, who have passed away ; and 
there are dozens of these laid side by side here 
since fifty years ago. When grandfather 
Douthit passed. Elder John Ellis assisted me in 
the service. When my mother went in August, 
1871, aged fifty-seven, my young brother 
George assisted me with a most uplifting hymn. 

Two years after my mother's death, my 
brother George himself joined "the Choir In- 
visible." Then I must alone endeavor to speak 
comforting words to the weeping crowd in Oak 
Grove Chapel, where he had helped me so effect- 

[ 115 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

ivelj. That was, at the time, the sorest cross 
of my Hfe. I could not feel that it was right 
for one to go who was so young, so stalwart 
physically and so helpful and full of promise 
as co-worker with me in the ministry. 

George Douthit was a manly man. His body 
was large and tall, weighing nearly two hun- 
dred pounds, with a fine face, and most like, so 
my mother used to say, his father when young 
and before the dread custom of the times had 
changed him. He had a charming musical 
voice. He was the picture of health, and seemed 
destined for long life. He was cheerful, full 
of humor and good spirits, fond of manly exer- 
cise, and, withal, of most serious purpose. He 
felt called to help me in the ministry and did 
help wonderfully. But he presumed too much 
on his strong constitution. He overworked and 
unwisely exposed himself. He returned from 
Antioch, after a year of hard study, and worked 
through a heated term in the harvest field. He 
was prostrated with malarial fever and when 
slightly recovered he attended crowded meetings 
of nights in badly ventilated and over-heated 
rooms. 

I want to tell a great deal about my brother 
[ 116 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

George in this story, because he has been near 
me and a co-worker in this mission as effectively 
since what we call his death as before that event. 
" For are they not all ministering spirits ? " 
The story of my life work would be sadly 
lacking without this testimony of what his life 
on earth and in heaven has helped me to be 
and do. 

I cannot now sing well enough to be heard in 
public; and I could scarcely distinguish 
"Yankee Doodle" from "Old Hundred" till 
I heard brother George sing. The last time he 
was with me in a public meeting before he passed 
up higher, he sang with such marvelous power 
the old hymn : " Guide me, O Thou Great 
Jehovah," that it seemed as if a holy contagion 
swept through the entire audience; and a little 
while after, to my great surprise, I was singing 
that hymn as I had never sung before in my life, 
though I had learned printed notes in music and 
tried in vain for many years to sing. 

I am convinced there is infinitely more music 
to be learned by contact with hearts and souls 
inspired of God than by all the training of 
experts with printed notes or vocal culture. 
" Nearer my God to Thee " was sung by my 

[ 117 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

brother George at Log Church the first time 
it was heard in this part of the country. He 
had learned it at Antioch College. 

George was one of the little band of eight 
persons who united in organizing the first 
Unitarian church in southern Illinois, namely, 
the Oak Grove Church of Liberal Christians. 
When he heard the history of my early struggles 
and my failure to get to Antioch College, he 
was ambitious to gain a victory over that 
failure. He would go to Antioch anyhow, 
graduate and come back and help me win other 
victories from defeat. He did go, for three 
years. Meantime, as was revealed after hia 
death, he bequeathed the little estate he pos- 
sessed to be used for the education of my chil- 
dren, so deeply interested was he in my work. 

Not only in this mission was his death greatly 
mourned, but his teachers and fellow students 
at Antioch College felt his loss keenly. They 
had all grown strongly attached to him, and 
were deeply impressed with his life among them, 
so much so that Doctor George W. Hosmcr, the 
President of the College, was moved to come and 
preach a sermon in his memory a few months 
after the burial. 

[ 118 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

I cannot forbear transcribing some extracts 
from a letter written at the time of my brother's 
death by President Hosmer to the Liberal 
Christian. This letter was dated February 10, 
1873. It reads as follows: 

" Just now we are mourning the loss of 
George W. Douthit, the brother of our mission- 
ary minister in southern Illinois. Mr. Douthit 
was twenty-four years old, a member of our 
Sophomore class, a superior scholar, and a noble 
young man. He died at his home in Illinois. 
Let me tell you of this family and its home. 

" Southern Illinois, you know, was Egypt, 
because so dark with ignorance, intemperance, 
and the love and defense of slavery. In that 
darkness these young men, our devoted minister, 
Jasper, and this lamented George and other 
brothers and sisters were born. Jasper was the 
eldest, and in his early youth he rose up in pro- 
test against the life about him ; he was for anti- 
slavery, for temperance, for education, and for 
free liberal Christianity. The community was 
incensed against him, violence was threatened ; 
but he stood calm and determined. Pressed by 
such difficulties and dangers even, he heard there 
was to be a Conference of Liberal Christians at 
Detroit. I remember him as he appeared there, 
looking as Abraham Lincoln would have looked 
at his age. He touched our hearts, he con- 

[ 119 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

vinced our reason, and we gave him the right 
hand of fellowship, and helped him go to Mead- 
ville to prepare for the ministry. 

" When Jasper was prepared, by three years 
at Meadville school, he would go nowhere else 
but back to his old battlefield in Illinois, though 
earnestly invited to easier fields of labor, and he 
returned in solemn purpose to do what he could 
to scatter that darkness. And there he has been 
for some years, enduring hardness that Paul 
would praise. He is near his old home amidst 
those who, twelve years ago, threatened him with 
violence, and his sphere is an area of fifteen to 
twenty miles ; he has four preaching stations, 
and is giving himself in all helpful ways to the 
people around him. I think we have no such 
Christian ministry as his. 

" George, whose death we mourn, rose up in 
the light of Jasper's life. Quickened, inspired 
and aided, he came here for education to prepare 
himself for usefulness in helping Jasper. He 
has distinguished himself here, showing large 
ability and fine intuition. Always grave, ear- 
nest and manly, he prompted his fellow students 
to true, noble life. 

" Just before leaving here, Mr. Douthit read 
a paper of rare pith and force before his Lit- 
erary Society. The last time he was with his 
associates, it became known that he was to leave 
for a time, and some of the younger members, 
with an unreasonable levit}', called upon Mr. 
Douthit for a song. With a quiet dignity he 

[ 120 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

rose, and uttering a Methodist farewell song or 
hymn, to suit his circumstances and feelings, he 
sang it through, filling eyes not used to weeping 
with tears, and awakening thoughts of tender 
solemnities in those not often reached by reli- 
gious appeals." 

The visit of Dr. Hosmer and the memorial 
service proved one of the most memorable oc- 
casions in the history of this mission. The ven- 
erable president was a most impressive person- 
ality to look upon. He was large, dignified and 
manly, with silver locks and a face beaming with 
smiles. My father thought Dr. Hosmer 
preached the greatest seraion he ever heard. It 
moved all hearts. It was a beautiful tribute 
to the memory of one whose brief life had seem- 
ingly moved more souls to think of God and 
eternal life than many who stay on earth more 
than three times as many years. 

While visiting me on this occasion. Presi- 
dent Hosmer wrote again to the Liberal Chris- 
tian, of June 7th, 1873, giving his impression 
as follows: 

" Here I am, this charaning summer day, in 
southern Illinois, in Brother Douthit's best 
room, in the quiet country, a beautiful grove 
round the simple house, the wild flowers bloom- 

[ 121 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

ing, and the birds singing, making the morning 
joyful. This room has a large case of some 
of the best books usually seen in a minister's 
library. There are four large portraits upon 
the wall, each finely significant — Dr. Chan- 
ning's, Theodore Parker's, Robert Collyer's, and 
one of George Douthit, the brother of our 
friend Jasper, a very superior young man, a 
student of Antioch College, who died last win- 
ter. We all loved and highly valued him, and 
the college sends me to sympathize with the be- 
reaved neighborhood and bear testimony to the 
M'orth of the promising young man. I wish 
our whole denomination could see the modest 
home of their missionary and his field of work. 
His house, built by his own hands, with the help 
of the brothers, would hold a small part of our 
Israel at a time, and the intrusion would be seri- 
ous to most housekeepers ; but Mrs. Douthit, 
who was a Massachusetts woman and not a 
stranger to books; and Muses, with a calm, 
sweet dignity, would not be disturbed. We 
really have an Oberlin here in southern Illinois. 
Brother Douthit strives to supply the spiritual 
wants of the people anywhere within six or seven 
or ten miles. He has four principal preaching 
stations ; and by his large, catholic spirit and 
fine, sharp thought, lie is winning hearers and 
fellow workers ; and a great enlightenment al- 
ready appears. People are collected for wor- 
ship ; schools are better managed and more cared 
for. 

[ 122 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

" The work Mr. Douthit is doing here is 
hard, — to many it would seem repulsive, — and 
very poorly compensated; he could not live but 
for his few acres of land and his garden. 
These farmers, many of them, having had no re- 
lations with any church for years, have no habit 
of giving and are surprised with themselves 
when Mr. Douthit's unselfishness and real, use- 
ful service wins gifts from them. But the work 
is interesting; it shows the only way of uplift- 
ing these wide-spreading farming communities 
of the West." 

Sometimes, when cast down and feeling keenly 
my personal shortcomings and failure to ac- 
complish what I have attempted, I have been 
cheered by the thought that if this mission has 
been the means under God of saving that one 
brother from ruin, and making his brief life 
such a power for good, the mission has been 
worth more than it has cost. And, so far as 
God gives me to see, the lives of scores of young 
people whom I knew forty or fifty years ago 
would have been blasted, as many before them 
had been, but for just such influences as God 
sent through this Unitarian mission. 

In a remote part of the county some twelve 
miles from Shelbyville, about a mile from a little 
village called Mode and beside one of the oldest 

[ 123 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

graveyards in the county, there was a httle log 
school-house. I preached there for some time, 
and the house became too small for our meetings. 
Then the farmers said they would join hands 
and build a new meeting-house and call it Union 
Church, to be free to all denominations when 
not occupied by the Unitarians. The house 
was built to scat some three or four hundred 
people, and everybody said that Robei't Collyer 
must come and dedicate it. They had read and 
heard of his being at Oak Grove Chapel. Mr. 
Collyer came and when he arrived he said he 
had gotten farther into the real Eg3'pt than 
he had ever been before ; for it was a sort of 
wilderness place. 

The following report of the dedication serv- 
ice was made by the Shelhyville Union: 

" Last Sunday, the 13th of July, 1873, was 
the day set apart for the dedication of a new 
church just completed near Mode, in this county, 
and twelve miles southeast of this city. In the 
service the Unitarian, Christian, Methodist and 
Presbyteriari sects were represented. An ex- 
cellent choir had been extemporized by Prof. J. 
C. Smith, of Marshall, Clark County, who had 
also the aid of a sweet-toned instrument. About 
six hundred dollars in money was to be raised, 
to leave the house free from debt. It was up- 

[ 124 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

hill work. Mr. Collyer said that one sad sign 
of the need of a church in that community was 
the apparent indifference on the part of some 
persons in the immediate vicinity. Many per- 
sons gave beyond their abihty. For example: 
it was enough to bring tears to a stingy man's 
eyes to see old Uncle Jacob Elliott come forward 
holding out a handful of money in addition to 
the generous contributions of money, timber and 
land he had already given. He is one of the 
oldest settlers of Shelby County and truly one 
of nature's noblemen. And his wife is equal to 
her worthy husband. Everybody had a free 
invitation to go to Uncle Jacob's crib and help 
himself to oats and corn for his beasts and to eat 
a lunch with him. The name of Jacob Elliott 
will go down to a grateful posterity, while the 
men who live in splendid mansions and refused 
to give anything will be forgotten. Uncle 
Jacob lives in an old log; house of but two 
rooms. 



5J 



It was during this visit for the dedication at 
Mode that Mr. Collyer learned the story 
of John Oliver Reed's remarkable conversion. 
A while before this visit of Mr. Collyer, this 
man had told his religious experience in a heart- 
searching speech to a wondering crowd at a 
meeting at Oak Grove Chapel. My wife and 
I took notes of that speech, and reported to 
Mr. Collyer when he came. He made a sermon 

[ 125 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

story of it to his congregation in Chicago, and 
it was pubhshed in the daily papers. Then the 
American Unitarian Association printed it in 
tract form, and it was reprinted in England 
and translated into Welsh. Thousands of 
copies have been and are still being circulated 
in America and in other countries. The tract 
is entitled " A Story of the Prairie." It is true 
to facts in every particular. John was my 
cousin, the son of my father's sister, and after 
his conversion he told how once, while I was 
taking the enrollment for the draft, he went to 
one of my Sunday sei*vices with a pistol in his 
pocket, resolved to shoot me if I preached what 
he had heard I was in the habit of preaching; 
but during the opening prayer he gave up the 
resolve ; and was troubled in conscience till the 
great light and wonderful peace came to him. 
In those early days I made appointments at 
various school-houses, and nearly always had 
good congregations. Much of the time, 
having no other way of getting there, I walked 
through mud or snow or sleet. The last long 
walk made on Sunday morning to fill an ap- 
pointment was twelve miles through the snow. 
There was just one family at meeting that 
stormy morning, and they were not members of 

[ 126 ] 




MR. DOUTHIT AND HIS SONS ROBERT AND GEORGE 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

the church. They afterwards became zealous 
members of the Free Methodist church, but 
were always my faithful friends. The father 
helped me to buy one of the first printing 
presses used in the mission ; and his daughter 
was married at the Unitarian parsonage and 
went to Africa as a missionary, and died there. 

During this period Elder John Ellis, of 
Yellow Springs, Ohio, a liberal evangelist of the 
*' Christian Connection," gave valuable assist- 
ance in my work. Elder Ellis was one of the 
early trustees of Antioch College and he was 
at one time editor of the Herald of Gospel 
Liberty, published at Dayton, Ohio, said to be 
the oldest religious weekly published in the 
United States. But he was mostly a pilgrim 
preacher, walking to his appointments, much 
of the time, with staff in hand, till he dropped 
suddenly. 

Brother Ellis was powerful in song and 
prayer. He was the author of the once popular 
song in the West, called " The White Pilgrim," 
and he could sing it most impressively. He be- 
came interested in my work in the year 1868, 
and from that time to the close of the first 
protracted meeting in the court-house, March, 
1876, he was frequently with me. He helped 

[ 127 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

in the gathering of congregations at Oak 
Grove, Mode, Sylvan and other points in the 
county. He died a few years ago at the age 
of eighty. His wife, a physician and relative 
of General W. T. Sherman, published her hus- 
band's autobiography, in which he speaks only 
too kindly of me and my labors. At one time 
in the first years of the work in Shelbyville, 
Mrs. Ellis had a class of over fifty young 
women in Unity Sunday-school who were mostly 
hired girls in the homes of the town. 

During the years of my preaching at Oak 
Grove, Mode, Sylvan, Mt. Carmel and the old 
court-house, and in the early meetings at 
Lithia Springs, Jacob Smith, a popular sing- 
ing-school teacher, gave me valuable assistance. 
He was an elder in the Presbyterian church at 
Marshall, Illinois, but was a most loyal friend. 
He sang with his whole soul and taught others 
to sing in my meetings from the time we first 
met, about 1869, till the Father called him 
home. 



[ 128 ] 



In 1874 I was jaded in body and hedged 
in by poverty. The way to continue the work 
Avas hidden. My mother had died and I was 
not needed at home for her sake. Brother 
George had gone. I was tempted to give up ; 
but some friends urged me to go to the 
National Unitarian Conference in Saratoga, 
New York, and make a speech. My wife said 
I was not fit to go alone. Our four children 
were quite small. The youngest child, our 
Christmas gift, three years old, seemed too little 
to leave. However, it was decided to leave all 
with friends and go. I thought it would 
probably be the only and last opportunity I 
would have to testify to a Unitarian Conference 
of what was nearest my heart. People had 
told me that Unitarianism was only for the 
" highly cultured," and that I was wasting my 
life where the field was not ready for our 
gospel. I really felt that if this were true, I 

[ 129 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

could not call myself a Unitarian, but before 
I discarded the name, I would clear my con- 
science with some last words to the Unitarian 
body. Moreover, I was encouraged on learning 
that distinguished Unitarians like Doctors Ed- 
ward E. Hale, Henry W. Bellows, Rush R. 
Shippen and Robert Collyer had determined to 
make a forward move for missionary work. 

So I accepted the invitation to speak at the 
National Conference and Mrs. Douthit went 
with me. The missionary meeting was held on 
Thursday evening, September 17, and Judge E. 
Rockwood Hoar presided. One of the speakers 
was Rev. Thos. L. Eliot, of Portland, Oregon, 
who was most eloquent for aggressive work. 

From the rapturous applause his address re- 
ceived, I began to think that the main body of 
Unitarians was alive for the gospel to all 
people. I was glad, though I trembled, to be 
called to follow Dr. Eliot. The following is 
the synopsis of my speech as reported at that 
time in the Christian Register: 

" We ought to have learned from higher au- 
thority than Prof. Max Mueller that Christian- 
ity is a missionary religion. The command of 
its great founder was, ' Go into all the world 
and preach the gospel.' To preach the gospel 

[ 180 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

in Christ's mind was to live the gospel. Chris- 
tianity is not merely giving wise advice, not 
going half way, but the whole way, to save men 
from sin. The Holy Spirit blows everywhere 
for the salvation of men. The leaven of the 
Kingdom of God leavens the whole, not half, of 
humanity. If Unitarianism does not mean that 
a Christian is a missionary by nature, if it does 
not mean to convert the world to Christianity, 
then we had better give up the Christian name 
and no longer dishonor it. What shall we do? 
Shall we scatter our literature? Yes; but let 
us send men as missionaries with the Holy Spirit 
in their hearts. It is a great joy to me that 
this denomination has concluded not to spend 
its force in grinding upon itself, but that it is 
to show a more missionary spirit. We need 
more spiritual force. We need, as Dr. Hedge 
has said, * morality with the divine emphasis.' 
Where the will of God fills the heart, it finds the 
way to other hearts. It is the individual, per- 
sonal sympathy that moves men. Warm sym- 
pathy is what most people crave. And for the 
want of it amongst us, many remain in false 
ecclesiastical relations who would otherwise join 
with us in the army of progress. On the line 
of progress in holiness and love let us move on- 
ward. Let us obey the laws of God, which are 
the laws of progress." 

Dr. Henry W. Bellows, of New York, the 
beloved President of the National Sanitary 

[ 131 ] 



JASrER DOITTHIT'S STORY 

Commission for the armies of the Union in the 
Civil War, followed me with one of his most in- 
spiring addresses. " Dr. Bellows never spoke 
with greater power," so the Christian Register 
reported ; and that was saying much of the most 
eloquent preacher then among the Unitarians. 
" The meeting was exceedingly enthusiastic," 
continues the Register's report. " Brothers 
Eliot and Douthit received the warmest welcome 
that warm-hearted people could give. They 
are the embodiment of the true missionary 
spirit." 

At the close of the meeting Judge Hoar, the 
chairman, was the first to thank me for my 
address. Then followed scores to shake hands 
and express sympathy. I was surprised beyond 
expression, and my wife was still more sur- 
prised, " for," said she, " I have heard you 
preach better often when nobody thanked you." 

The hour was late; but after the speaking, 
Rev. Rush R. Shippen, Secretary of the Con- 
ference, presented the following resolution : 

" Resolved; That we give to Brothers Eliot 
and Douthit our hearty sympathy and God- 
speed in their arduous labors in difficult places 
of our work, and that we promise them sus- 
tenance and sympathy forever." 

[" 132 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

The resolution was emphatically approved by 
a standing vote of that audience of several 
thousand wide-awake Unitarians. That great 
multitude of bright, cheering faces was about 
the most inspiring scene I ever beheld. It seems 
as if it would never fade from my memory. 

The following editorial comment appeared in 
the Christian. Register of Sept. 26, 1874, Rev. 
Thomas J. Mumford, Editor: 

" The best meeting at the Saratoga Confer- 
ence was on Thursday evening, when in addi- 
tion to the other excellent addresses Messrs. 
Eliot of Oregon, and Douthit of Illinois, made 
the most telling speeches of the kind to which 
we have ever listened. The earnestness, sim- 
plicity and modest unconsciousness of these no- 
ble men, fresh from their outposts, thrilled the 
whole assembly, and if the representatives of 
our churches had felt authorized to make large 
pledges, the hoped-for $100,000 could have 
been raised on the spot. Many laymen said 
substantially : * If this is the work that can be 
done in our country, and such men as these can 
be found to do it, it is time for us to close our 
skeptical mouths and open our unbelieving 
pocket-books very wide in response to the ap- 
peal of the Unitarian Association.' Many 
clergymen also heard and we trust heeded the 
voice of that memorable hour which called them 

[ 133 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

to renewed consecration and increased sacrifice 
in the work of the ministry. There is nothing 
so potent in its influence, or so searching in its 
suggestions, as the presence of faithful men who 
have endured hardness Avithout the least whim- 
pering or boastfulness. It puts to shame all 
our ordinar3' devotion and average fidelity. 
Messrs. Eliot and Douthit must return to their 
isolated positions cheered and strengthened by 
such cordial manifestations of the confidence, 
honor and love of their communion." 

Ex-Governor John D. Long, of Massa- 
chusetts, later Secretary of the Navy in Presi- 
dent Mclvinley's cabinet, in an article in the 
March, 1875, number of the Unitarian Review, 
Boston, has this bit of description : 

" At the recent National Conference at Sara- 
toga, where, with the few usual exceptions which 
prove the rule, everybody was brilliant and fer- 
vid and kindling ; where some denominational 
questions were argued with rare eloquence; 
where orators spoke, unsurpassed in graceful 
persuasiveness or magnificent declamation; 
where elaborate thinkers searched the obscurest 
enigmas of theology and science, the audience 
groping to follow, — you who were there re- 
member that one evening, at a sort of mission- 
ary meeting, there came forward a young man, 
slender and tall, and as lank as Abraham Lin- 

[ 134 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

coin. His straight hair ran down behind his ears 
to the collar of his coat. He rambled in his 
speech, as if he were timid before that cultivated 
assembly, and stumbled over the minutes which 
at first he held in his hands. But his voice 
somehow was of that sympathetic, human sort 
that you couldn't help listening to ; his eyes 
were so honest and soulful and saintly that you 
couldn't look away from them ; and as he nar- 
rated in a homely way his labors among obscure 
men in obscure places, his preaching in barns 
and taverns and court-houses and school-houses 
and school-rooms, in that Egypt which is the 
Nazareth of his state, going about doing good, 
literally following in the steps of the Saviour, 
with scarce other compensation than his own 
sense of doing the Master's work, — so worn 
with his labors that he was almost too ill to be at 
Saratoga, — the heart of every man and woman 
in that audience went out to him and loved him ; 
and more than one cheek was wet with tears. 
Human nature, which loves warm existences and 
generous deeds, and wearies of philosophy and 
talk, seemed to assert itself with a glad sense of 
relief; and this genuine Christian warrior and 
holy pilgrim was from that hour the very hero 
of that great Conference, though himself all the 
time utterly simple, unaffected and unconscious ; 
and as I looked at his pale face and listened to 
the sweet Methodistical appeal of his voice, 
which rose In the eloquence of truth, when he 
threw his notes aside and uttered his soul in the 

[ 135 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

freedom of his own quaint, natural exhortatory 
style, like a bird singing in its native forest ; 
and as I thought of the Jim Bludsos, the rough 
natures, the hungry souls, whom no white 
choker or clerical pendant could have touched, 
but to whom he had brought a gleam of the 
higher life, and in whom he had implanted the 
springing seeds of Christian charity and cul- 
ture ; of the homes he had blessed and the hearts 
he had lightened, — then and there it was that, 
walking on the plains of Judea, healing the 
sick, blessing little children, feeding the poor, 
and comforting the sinning and the sorrowing, 
I saw, with my own eyes, once more upon the 
earth, a living disciple of the blessed Jesus of 
Nazareth. Such a spirit and such a life, adapt- 
ing themselves, of course, to every variety of 
circumstances and society, are what, if there is 
any worth in Christianity, the Christian Uni- 
tarian body wants today ; for such were the life 
and spirit of Jesus Christ, its founder." 

Thus I was introduced only too kindly to our 
Unitarian body. I feel unworthy and rebuked 
every time I read such kind words as I have 
quoted about myself in these pages ; but I have 
been persuaded that it is due the cause to which 
I have devoted my life, and to the distinguished 
friends who have thus kindly testified and co- 
operated with me in the mission. In the words 
of him who gave me the " charge " at my 

[ 136 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

ordination, Rev. Charles G. Ames : " I have 
learned from the Swedish sage that he who takes 
to himself the credit of good works which the 
Lord enables him to perform, is at heart a 
thief — he takes what does not belong to 
him." 

I never again received such enthusiastic ap- 
plause as that at Saratoga. I never was invited 
but once afterwards to address so large an 
audience. That was a year or two after the 
meeting at Saratoga and it was in Music Hall, 
Boston. I was in no condition to speak. I 
had been dissipating, that is, I had accepted in- 
vitations to too many banquets. In company 
with Doctors Hale, Bellows, Brooke Herford, 
Rush R. Shippen and others, I had lunched at 
Harvard College with President Eliot ; and on 
the evening of the meeting at Music Hall I had 
been with Doctor Hale to a club banquet in Bos- 
ton, where by request I had given some report 
of my acquaintance with Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son on his lecture tour in the West. My ad- 
dress at Music Hall seemed to fall flat, though 
there were some expressions of approval from 
Doctors Bellows and Hale and a few others on 
the platform. I hope never to forget how, at 
the close of the meeting. Doctor Hale kindly 

[ 137 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

took me to his home, put me to bed, passed his 
hand softly over my face and said soothingly: 
" Good night ! Good night ! You have done 
what you could. Now don't worry, but sleep 
sweetly." I had tried very hard to keep from 
making known my distress ; but somehow the 
dear man knew it all. 

That meeting at Saratoga made me quite rec- 
onciled to my task. Mrs. Douthit and I then 
consecrated ourselves anew to this mission. It 
is not too much to say that mostly in the 
strength of the inspiration and assurance re- 
ceived at that Conference, I have kept courage 
and pegged away here " in His name " thirty- 
eight years longer than I had expected. I have 
held on, hoping against hope deferred, because I 
believed that whatever else might be said of the 
faults of Unitarians, they were noted for being 
as good as their word, and so long as I gave 
myself and my all to the faith that makes faith- 
ful and also tried my best to practise the faith- 
fulness that makes faith in the service of man, 
I might trust the good Providence for the re- 
sult. And through all the years since, from 
time to time, I have had cause to thank God and 
take courage from the men and women who were 
at that Saratoga Conference, though most of 

[ 138 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

their faces I have not seen since, nor can I hope 
to see them again on earth. 

After so many years in the rural districts I 
felt I ought to make a detennined effort in 
Shelbyville. On Sunday, February 15, 1874, I 
began regular preaching in the old court-house. 
Several discouraging attempts had been made 
to secure a hearing at this place. In my diary 
for Monday, February 22, 1869, occurs the 
following : 

" A muddy, disagreeable ride to the court- 
house and back last night. About a dozen were 
present. They listened suspiciously rather than 
kindly. Some acted as if they had gone into 
the wrong pew and were ashamed of it. Next 
Sunday I shall try again in the day time." 

Accordingly I walked five miles on the next 
Sunday morning to the court-house. The ap- 
pointment had been thoroughly advertised. A 
short time before the hour for services one man 
looked in at the door, and on being told there 
would be preaching if anyone came to hear, 
said perhaps he'd come around again after 
awhile, and he went away. That fellow lived 
in the district where I had been holding meet- 
ings, and had come to Shelbyville on Saturday, 
and had got so dinink he couldn't get home that 

[ 139 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

night, and so was on hand, to a small extent, that 
Sunday morning. I waited until nearly twelve 
o'clock, but the man not returning and no one 
else coming, I turned my steps homeward some- 
what cast down, but determined to try it again. 
Occasional efforts were made during the next 
five years, but were not very successful. But 
now, in 1874, I determined that if the audience 
averaged no more than one dozen, and though 
the minister had to be his own janitor, and 
pay all incidental expenses, he would neverthe- 
less stick to it for one year. At the first 
meeting there were about two dozen persons 
present, and the audiences gradually increased. 
A number of the members of my congregations 
in the country came in and helped. Unexpected 
friends arose. A small Sunday-school was or- 
ganized in the spring of 1874, and rapidly in- 
creased in number and interest. The Church of 
the Disciples, Boston, Dr. James Freeman 
Clarke, pastor, sent us a donation of books for 
the Sunday-school library. Then our old 
singing teacher, Mr. Jacob C. Smith, the same 
who had got acquainted with me in the country 
work, came over from Marshall, Illinois, and 
taught one of his popular singing-schools in 
the court-house during May, 1874, closing with 

[ 140 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

a jubilee concert, and giving part of the pro- 
ceeds for purchase of an organ for the society. 

On Thursday evening, May 13, 1875, at a 
meeting held in the court-house, thirteen per- 
sons united in a church organization. Novem- 
ber 1, 1875, the members had increased to 
twenty-one persons. During the month of 
February, 1876, real revival meetings were com- 
menced at the court-house, continuing with 
unabated interest every night for eight weeks. 
Elder John Ellis, of whom I have spoken on 
another page, assisted in this memorable re- 
vival. 

I believe that protracted effort was what 
Theodore Parker would call " A True Revival 
of Religion." The result was certainly ethical. 
I think I may say the key-note of the meet- 
ings was struck by Jenkin Lloyd Jones, who 
preached in the old court-house a while before 
the meetings began. His sermon was very 
practical and enthusiastic. It caused the dry 
bones to shake. 

The final result was a church of seventy-five 
members of the unchurched and mostly poor 
people of Shelbyville, with several of the 
county officers. Many had been hard drinkers. 
One had been a saloon keeper for forty years. 

[ 141 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

A few years before, in his saloon, when I called 
to notify him that I would prosecute him for 
letting my father have whiskey contrary to law, 
in order to intimidate me he made a pass to 
break my head with a whiskey glass. But he 
was " cooled off " instantly by a " few pointed 
words " and a movement to " make good " 
from my now sainted brother George, who was 
with me and who was of size, nerve and force 
enough to command respect, though he was still 
a mere boy. It was the only time I ever saw my 
brother thoroughly angry. Now this man con- 
sulted with me as to the disposition to make of 
his stock of liquors, and was my faithful friend 
and helper until his death. He was punctual 
at church and took a great pride in being the 
first one at the annual day-dawn Easter services, 
of which I believe he attended every one until 
he was called to the everlasting Easter mom. 

One of the prime movers in building the Uni- 
tarian Church in Shelbyville, and a most gen- 
erous supporter of the mission in his last 3'ears, 
was one of the most beloved and trusted of 
public officials. His grandfather won honor 
as a soldier of the Revolution and lived to be 
over eighty years old. This man might have 
been Governor of Illinois or held some other 

[ 142 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

high position if he had not fallen a victim in 
the prime of life to the social glass. This man 
came among the first to hear the preaching at 
the old court-house in Shelbyville, and wel- 
comed with joy as a new found treasure the 
Unitarian gospel. He exclaimed : " That is 
what I have always thought, but never heard 
preached before! I want to join that church." 
And he did so, in good earnest, though he had 
been during the Civil War strongly opposed 
to my poHtics. Then he told me privately of 
his weakness. He did not tell everybody, but 
he told me more than I felt at liberty to relate 
until his warfare on earth was over. 

I remember well on the same night after 
he signed the church covenant, at the old court- 
house, he asked me to walk alone with him, 
and said : *' Douthit, I am in a worse way than 
most people think ; you don't know it all. You 
don't know how hard it is for me to resist when 
old friends ask me to drink. I'm going to have 
a desperate struggle, and I will need all the help 
I can get. But I have enlisted for the war and 
am determined to stick if you'll stick by me." 
I replied : " Yes, my dear fellow, I will stick 
by you so long as you will let me; I will stick 
by you in this world and the next, if God will 

[ 143 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

let me, and I believe He will." " Douthit," he 
said, " I would give all I am worth in this world, 
if I might have heard forty years ago, the words 
of warning and the gospel which I have heard 
within the last few yeai*s." 

I think it is not too much to say that the 
first Congregational (Unitarian) Church of 
Shelbyville would never have been built if it had 
not been for that man, William A. Cochran. 
He was a most loyal member to the last. In 
the line of church charities and expenses, he al- 
ways led the subscription. By his personal in- 
fluence, he brought many of his friends to 
church with him, and the people elected him 
and re-elected him clerk of the Circuit Court 
until his death. 

This man was a good listener, and he never 
got offended at the preacher who was some- 
times, perhaps, too personal and practical. He 
often expressed to me the joy it was to him to 
be able to give to the church, and when he lost 
large sums of money, he would say to me, " I 
wish I had given that to the church, for then 
I would have had no regrets." 

I have said in the pulpit, and will repeat here, 
that if the little church in Shelbyville ha& been 
the means of saving even one man hke William 

[ 144 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

A. Cochran, to such heroic effort for reform, 
and thus redeemed his life, then the church is 
worth all it has cost of toil and money. The 
great question of the Master should ever be in 
mind : " What doth it profit a man though he 
gain the whole world and lose his own soul? " 

The Shelbyville church, costing six thousand 
dollars, was built two blocks from the old court- 
house, and was paid for and dedicated within 
the year. The comer-stone was laid on Mon- 
day, November 2, 1875. Rev. Benjamin Mills, 
pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Rev. Theo- 
dore Brooks, pastor of the Christian Church, 
and Elder John Ellis assisted in the ceremonies. 
On May 8, 1876, the dedication exercises 
were held. Rev. James Freeman Clarke, D.D., 
preaching the sermon of the morning; and in 
the evening of the same day I was installed as 
pastor of the congregation. Rev. W. G. Eliot 
preaching the semion. Dr. John H. Heywood, 
Rev. F. L. Hosmer, Elder John Ellis and the 
Rabbi Sonnenschein of St. Louis, assisted in the 
ceremonies of installation and dedication. 

In the spring of 1875 we left the little home 
and farm in the country and moved to Shelby- 
ville, and two years later to the substantial brick 
dwelling next door to the church, since known as 

[ 145 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

the Unitarian parsonage. Here has been my 
home for over thirty years. While I felt that 
for the good of the mission the change must be 
made, I foresaw that it would make the ever 
present financial problem more difficult for us. 
In my humble cottage in the country, near my 
brothers and other relatives, with my little farm 
and garden, expenses were small and the problem 
of how to live could be more easily met in case 
of insufficient salary or failing strength which 
might render me unable to work. But the reso- 
lution of the Saratoga Conference of 1874! and 
the surprising success of the effort in Shelby- 
ville later, encouraged me to risk all. I knew 
it would be a hard tug, for I could not but be 
mindful of the inherent weakness of the organ- 
ization in a financial way. The members were 
mostly poor people on the move, and Shelby- 
ville is an old town of only three thousand 
population and ten churches. But I put all 
the energy and life I could into the work and 
refused to be discouraged by obstacles. 

There is one experience of my ministry in 
those years that lingers in memory, as about my 
only real vacation. It was the summer of the 
Philadelphia Centennial year. I had become so 
worn by the continuous strain incident to the 

[ 146 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

pioneer church work that I could hardly walk a 
hundred yards without stopping to rest. After 
the church dedication, it was somehow made pos- 
sible for me to take my wife and four children 
to visit with her people near Boston and not 
worry about the expense. While there we spent 
some weeks in a cottage on the sea shore, but 
I did not gain as fast as it seemed I ought. 
I had read Starr King's charming book about 
the White Mountains and longed to be there. 
Bom and reared on the prairie, I had had no 
experience of mountains. I was persuaded to 
go there alone for a week in August, 1876. 
The train arrived at Bethlehem, N. H., near 
Mt. Agassiz, late in the evening. The altitude 
had changed the temperature for me from 
August to a cool October. There was a 
blazing fire in the fireplace at the hotel, and 
a cheerful company of strangers chatting 
pleasantly around the fire. I slept sweetly and 
next morning after breakfast thought to take 
a stroll a short way up Mt. Agassiz; but I 
kept on and on until I had climbed to the top, 
and when I came down was astonished not to 
feel weary. 

Learning that Henry Ward Beecher was at 
the Twin Mountain House, near the foot of Mt. 

[ l^T' ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Washington, I resolved to go there and stay 
a few days. I engaged lodging at a farm 
house near by. While at the railroad station 
one day, as a passing train stopped, I heard 
a cheery voice from the cars call my name and 
say, " Am glad to see you here." It was the 
voice of William H. Baldwin, President of the 
Young Men's Christian Union, of Boston. He 
was not to stop there but he jumped off the 
train hurriedly and said : " I want you to 
meet my friend Beecher. Let me write you an 
introduction," and he hastily wrote in pencil 
on a card kindly commending me to the famous 
preacher. That was just like President Bald- 
win, as every one will say who knows him. I 
had been a subscriber to Mr. Beecher's paper, 
the Christian Union, from the first number, and 
had read his sermons for many years. 

I found Mr. Beecher at the hotel engaged in 
a game of croquet with INIrs. Mary A. Liver- 
more and her husband. Rev. Daniel P. Liver- 
more, the Universalist minister. I presented my 
card of introduction when Mr. Beecher was 
through playing. He greeted me cordially, 
and among other things remarked that Mr. 
Baldwin was a grand, good man doing a noble 
work in Boston. He said the bigotry of the 

[ 148 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Young Men's Christian Association in ex- 
cluding Unitarians and Universalists caused the 
Young Men's Christian Union to be organized 
with Mr. Baldwin as president. " I am glad 
to know," continued Mr. Beecher, " the move- 
ment is growing rapidly in public favor as it 
well deserves." When I told Mr. Beecher that 
I had read him for years and admired and 
loved him because he had done so much to save 
me from religious unbelief, he dropped his head 
and said in a serious tone : " Well, such testi- 
mony helps me to better bear the unjust criti- 
cism of which I have had to suffer a good deal 
lately." 

He invited me to see him any time at his 
room and I had pleasant and profitable inter- 
views with him during the week. He expressed 
kindly interest in my work and said, " If you 
need any books or any help anyway let me 
know." I thanked him, but felt that his sym- 
pathy and friendship were all I deserved, and 
never asked for anything more. I heard him 
preach on Sunday a memorable sermon on the 
" Joys of the Christian Life." It became 
known, I suspect through Mr. Beecher, that I 
was a minister and interested in temperance re- 
form. I was invited to speak on temperance 

[ 149 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

one Saturday evening at the Town House and 
then accepted an invitation to preach the next 
day, Sunday, evening. I was greatly surprised 
to have my message received with such favor, 
hut still more surprised, and also amused, to find 
that some of the farmers mistook me for Mr. 
Beecher. It had been rumored that he was to 
preach there at that time and people had come 
from miles around to hear him. I certainly 
did not in the least resemble the great preacher. 
But the most remarkable experience of all to 
me was the marvelous uplift in physical vigor. 
I had been there but a few days before I climbed 
on foot five miles or more over rugged steeps 
to the summit of Mt. Washington and returned 
the same day. This sudden recovery of 
strength was the most remarkable experience of 
the kind in my life. On reaching the summit 
I was overcome with awe and felt that I must 
fall down and worship. The summit was 
covered with snow. For scores of miles around 
I beheld mountains and valleys and rivers and 
villages that seemed as clusters of toy houses. 
The Atlantic Ocean glimmered in the sunlight 
nearly one hundred miles in the distance. I 
read in silence some passages of scripture with 
new meaning: "Groat and marvelous are thy 

[ 150 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

works. Lord God Almighty." " Before the 
mountains were brought forth, or ever thou 
had'st formed the earth and the world, even 
from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." 
" Lead me unto the Rock that is higher than 
I." " Thou art my Rock and my Salvation." 
While I was thus reading, a stranger perched 
on a great rock above me suddenly broke out in 
a loud voice with scripture quotations followed 
with a hymn like " Rock of Ages," and all the 
people round about stood still and silent as if 
enchanted. That scene and day, August 23, 
1876, linger bright in memory as the close of 
the last real vacation and the most inspiring 
experience in my life. Fresh power came to 
me to will to be, and to do more and better 
than ever. I resolved then that for the sake 
of preparation for more and better work I 
would make a pilgrimage to that altar of the 
Most High every tew years, the rest of my 
life. The resolution has never been kept. 
Meager means and fidelity to nearer duty have 
prevented. 



[ 151 ] 



XI 



A temperance crusade had been started by 
our meetings at the court-house, and kept up 
when we moved to the church, so that when 
the so-called Blue Ribbon Crusade swept over 
the country the meetings in Shelbyville natur- 
ally started in our church, and then moved to 
the largest audience room in town. For forty- 
two nights in succession we held crowded houses, 
until it seemed that nearly every man and 
woman in Shelbyville and vicinity was wearing 
a blue ribbon as a token of having signed the 
pledge of total abstinence. I plunged into this 
work with all my might, regardless of my limita- 
tions of strength and heedless of consequences. 
I was borne on by the wave of enthusiasm that 
everywhere prevailed. At the close of those 
meetings early in the year of 1878, I was 
prostrate for six weeks. 

A woman physician, Dr. Petrie, from 
New York state, happened in town, and 
learning of my case, kindly came to see me as 

[ 152 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

I lay helpless. She looked at me and said: 
" I have a message from heaven for you. 
You think you will die, but you will not. But 
if you don't stop so much speaking night after 
night you will become a miserable, chronic 
wreck and useless the rest of your life." The 
message deeply impressed me. I took the ad- 
vice. I wish I knew the address to-day of the 
good messenger so that I might express to her 
my gratitude for the timely, wise warning that 
has helped me to keep a frail body in fair 
working condition for thirty years longer than 
I expected. I was compelled, however, to give 
up the work of a circuit preacher and confine 
my labor to places near home. Thenceforward 
I gave myself more to local preaching and 
Post-office Misson work, the latter finally, for 
the most part through Our Best Words. I 
edited and printed this paper first as a parish 
paper, in 1880, and then for a year more as a 
missionary monthly, jointly with Dr. Charles 
G. Ames, then minister in Philadelphia. 

I have always believed in proclaiming my 
message from the house-tops — that is, in ad- 
vertising and in spreading the principles 
which I have felt most called upon to preach. 
I early recognized the power of the press 

[ 153 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

as an ally in this regard, and have improved 
every opportunity to enlist the services of 
the printed word in my work. I have 
been a contributor to the local press most 
of the time for fifty years, beginning as 
associate editor of the short-lived Shelby 
County Freeman, the first Free Soil or Repub- 
lican paper started in this region of Illinois. 
The Union was established in 1863 by John W. 
Johnson. He was a sort of Parson Brownlow 
editor, and a terror to " Copperheads," and his 
columns were ahvaj's open for anything I wished 
to say. Several of my sermons on the war 
were published in the Union. In 1868 the late 
Capt. Park T. Martin, of Danville, Illinois, be- 
came editor and, in part, proprietor of the 
Union, and invited me to edit " The Preaching 
Comer," of three columns, more or less. This 
I did for the year 1870 ; and I continued to con- 
tribute often to the local press thereafter. 
With a few rare and conspicuous exceptions 
during the Civil War and in my early anti- 
saloon crusade, I have been treated with marked 
courtesy and even generosity by the editorial 
fraternity. Many local newspapers exchange 
with Our Best Words, and the local press in this 
and adjoining counties and the reform press 

[ 154 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

over the state and nation have been especially 
kind and generous in their notices of my work 
at Lithia Springs. 

In the several local histories of Shelby 
County, large, costly volumes, I have been solic- 
ited to write accounts of the Unitarian Mission 
and have been given ample space in these sub- 
stantial records of local history to tell of our 
gospel and the effort to spread its principles 
here. These volumes are in the homes of the 
prominent families in every township in the 
county, and will be conned over again and again 
by coming generations. 

From the time it was established in 1880, 
twenty-eight years ago, Our Best Words has 
had a circulation varying from five hundred to 
ten thousand copies. The paper has been read 
by hundreds of ministers and editors of all sects 
and parties. These have learned through its 
pages truths and facts, especially about Unita- 
rians, that they probably would never have 
otherwise known. I think it is not too much 
to say that without some such printed messen- 
ger this mission could not have had half the 
influence in making known our principles of 
freedom, fellowship and character in religion; 
and I am quite sure Lithia Springs Chautauqua 

[ 155 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



could not have been possible. Through the 
reading of this httle paper, several persons at a 
distance have expressed the desire to become 
identified with the Unitarian church, — persons 
who have not before learned of any church they 
could honestly join. The editing and pub- 
lishing of the paper has been a labor of love 
with me, and despite the defects and drawbacks, 
the work upon it has been a pleasant diversion 
and has often proved a rest from greater cares ; 
so that, on the whole, it has been to me about 
the most satisfactory feature of my missionary 
service. Without such winged words, I should 
feel like a disarmed soldier in battle. 

In connection with editorial work on Our 
Best Words for twenty years past, my son, 
George L. Douthit, and I have published, be- 
sides various tracts and pamphlets, the fol- 
lowing books, most of which I have edited: 
" Shelby Seminary Memorial," Illustrated, 
cloth, 116 pages; "Out of Darkness Into 
Light ;" " The Journal of a Bereaved Mother," 
by Mrs. M. A. Deane, cloth, 400 pages ; and 
*' The Life Story and Personal Reminiscences 
of Col. John SobieskI," Illustrated, cloth, 400 
pages. 

When partly recovered from that long pros- 
[ 1-56 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

tration, occasioned by overwork during the Blue 
Ribbon Crusade meetings, I began war against 
the snares and stumbHng-blocks in the way of 
those who had taken the pledge and joined the 
church in an effort to reform. These were the 
open door of the licensed dram-shop, the corrupt 
politics, and the treating customs of the par- 
tisan bosses and the candidates for office. This 
custom was so deeply rooted and of such long 
standing that the majority of voters in both 
parties regarded it as necessary for success. 
" Of course no man can be elected to office in 
this county unless he sets up the drinks freely. 
You have got to do it or be beaten." That 
was the stereotyped reply of political candidates 
when I began to plead with them. Even some 
members of my congregation would insist that 
they had to do it, and persisted in the face 
of my solemn protest. I saw no more effective 
method of working than to publicly expose 
through Our Best Words every clearly known 
case of a candidate setting up drinks while 
electioneering for office. I gave warning pub- 
licly that I would publish the names of any 
and all candidates who treated voters to liquor. 
It was done, but it was a most painful ex- 
perience. The saloon was in politics, and I 

[ 157 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

enlisted for the war to drive it out. Neither 
of the political parties would tackle the giant, 
nor whisper a word against it in their platfoniis 
or party organs. By the help of Mrs. Ada H. 
Kepley, of Effingham County, a member of my 
Shrelbyville congregation, and about a dozen 
Free Methodists, at the court-house, May 29, 
1886, the Prohibition party had been organized, 
and I warmly espoused the cause. But this 
political activity was a most troublous and 
costly business to me. My salary was cut down 
and some friends at home and abroad turned 
away. My printing press would probably have 
been burned but for the fact that it was in a 
third story where fire could not consume it with- 
out putting a whole block in ashes. 

Thanks to the efforts of Rev. J. T. Sunder- 
land, Rev. John H. Heywood, Dr. James De 
Normandie and other friends, I was enabled to 
live and continue the battle, which went on till 
the snake was scotched if not killed. At least it 
has since been possible for men to be elected 
to office in Shelby County who do not bribe 
voters with liquor. The saloons were driven 
out of Shelbyville, and my printing office was 
moved into the room on the comer of the public 
square where one of the largest and most pop- 

[ 158 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



ular saloons had been kept. Our Best Words 
had become a weekly, with the largest circula- 
tion of any paper in the county, and by a 
combination with the Farmers' Mutual Benefit 
Association and similar movements, we came 
very near electing at one time, 1890, an anti- 
saloon ticket in the county. And yet, notwith- 
standing my outspokenness for over fifty-six 
years against their business, I am often called 
upon to officiate at the funerals of saloon 
keepers or members of their families. My 
friend. Senator Chafee, once made the public 
statement that no other preacher in town is 
called on oftener to serve at the funerals of dead 
drunkards. Saloon keepers have of late years 
treated me with courtesy. The only instance 
I recall to the contrary, besides the one already 
given in this story, is of a saloon keeper who 
took occasion, on meeting me in a friend's office, 
to speak insultingly to me, and abuse me because 
of my criticism of saloons. I expostulated with 
him and told him that his father and mother 
in heaven, who were my old friends, would be 
grieved to have him treat me so, and that he 
ought to quit his bad business and become a 
better man ; that I meant only kindness to him. 
Imagine my surprise when, in less than two 

[ 159 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

weeks afterward, that man was converted, joined 
the church of his choice, and sent me a special 
invitation to be present at his baptism. He 
quit the saloon business and remained a consist- 
ent church member the rest of his life. It is 
one of the strangest, most astonishing ex- 
periences of my life, that so very many who 
have been most bitter in their abuse of me have 
come to be among the most faithful friends. 
But I was in a cross-fire on the one hand be- 
cause of my aggressive temperance work, and 
on the other because of my Unitarianism. Sev- 
eral of the ablest friends of the mission at home 
and abroad had died. Many of our church 
members had gone away. My salary grew 
smaller, so that I felt for the time I must either 
give up the paper or give up my home and the 
mission. At that time a stranger came to me 
with a tempting price to buy my paper, and in 
February, 1892, I sold out, but with the distinct 
understanding that Our Best Words would be 
continued in the same line of battle. I was 
deceived. It soon became an organ of the Pop- 
ulists. 1 was worn down again, and a season 
of sad reverses followed. Then, after a year 
or so, in which saloons again came into Shelby- 
ville, a few friends rallied to my aid; and I 

[ 160 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

began to publish in April, 1893, a small 
monthly paper, Simple Truth, and finally re- 
purchased Our Best Words, in October, 1894. 
Then the Unitarians near Lithia Springs, some 
of whom had worshiped at Oak Grove Chapel, 
went to work and built another church near 
where the Log Church stood, and right by the 
graves of my father and mother. This was 
called Jordan Unitarian Church. The church 
was dedicated July 24, 1892, free from debt. 
I never consented to have a church dedicated 
otherwise. My dear friend. Rev. John H. Hey- 
wood of Louisville, and Rev. T. B. Forbush, 
then the zealous western superintendent of the 
American Unitarian Association, and others 
assisted. 

My wife and I felt greatly honored and 
blessed to have, during years before their trans- 
lation, the hearty sympathy and kind co-opera- 
tion of such saintly women as Miss Elizabeth 
G. Huidekoper, mentioned elsewhere in this 
story ; Miss Dorothea Dix, the famous American 
philanthropist; Mrs. Martha P. Lowe, wife of 
Charles Lowe, the much loved Secretary over 
thirty years ago, of the American Unitarian As- 
sociation, and Miss Elizabeth P. Channing, 
niece of the immortal Doctor Channing. The 

[ 161 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

cheerlul letters which these women frequently 
wrote us through twenty-five years or more, 
bring to mind, as I write, some of the happiest 
recollections of my life, — but the happiness is 
lessened by the thought that I ought to have 
been a better man and accomplished more good 
when favored with the friendships of such noble 
women. Miss Channing gave me, a few years 
before her death, what I prize as one of the 
most precious treasures, — an autograph letter 
of her distinguished uncle. The letter is most 
tenderly consoling for the bereaved, especially 
for all who have lost good mothers. 
Here is a copy of Dr. Channing's letter: 

" Newport, Sept. 25th, 1837. 
" My Dear Elizabeth, — 

" I sympathize with you in your great loss, 
for great it is to you, though I trust it is un- 
speakable gain to your departed friend. I was 
not at all surprised to hear of your mother's 
death ; grief and increasing infimiity had long 
been leading her toward the grave, and now we 
trust her wounded spirit is at rest. I never 
knew a more tender heart. She not only felt 
her bereavements most keenly, but was exqui- 
sitely alive to the sufferings of her fellow crea- 
tures. Few fulfilled as she did the law of ' bear- 
ing others' burdens.' What deep sympathy, 
what deepest solicitude, what never wearied 

[ 162 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

kindness have you experienced from her from 
the first hour of life. What can equal in con- 
stancy and disinterestedness a mother's love! 
In losing such a friend we lose one whose place 
cannot be supplied. You must be grateful that 
you were so long allowed to commune with the 
affectionate spirit; that you had so many op- 
portunities of testifying your gratitude; that 
you witnessed so much desire, amidst her trou- 
ble and peculiar sensibilities, to resign herself 
to the Divine Will. You must feel that she 
died, as she had lived, to minister to you, — to 
minister to the spirit by carrying your thoughts 
upward and into eternity. Though the outward 
ear cannot hear her voice, yet * she speaketh.' 
Our friends whilst they lived bound us to earth. 
By death they perform a more blessed office, 
they may lift us above it. I hope it will be the 
effect of your suffering, — to tranquilize your 
mind, to diminish the power of shortlived evil 
over you, to give you fortitude and energy. I 
beg you to present my affectionate remembrance 
to your sister. My love to George and the chil- 
dren. Ruth and my children are well and hold 
yours in affectionate remembrance. 
" Very truly and affectionately, 
" Yours, 

" Wm. E. Channing." 

In the beautiful " Autobiography and 
Diary " of the late Miss E. P. Channing, is the 
following record: 

[ 163 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

"Sept. 14th, 1906 (?): — Gave my mite to 
help on Mr. Douthit's mission, I think the 
needed five thousand will be raised, and the apos- 
tle of temperance, who has disarmed sectarian 
prejudice, will at last be comforted with the 
thought that he is understood." 



[ 164 ] 



XII 

My first printed sermon was on " Unity in 
Division." It appeared in the Phrenological 
Journal, about forty years ago. I have 
always been more eager to imbibe the spirit 
of Jesus and impart something of that spirit 
to others than to make people take my denomi- 
national badge. It has been my hobby, so to 
speak, to insist upon loyalty to conviction, to 
respect the honest convictions of others and re- 
joice in the good they may do that I cannot 
do. I am glad to consider myself a member of 
the church universal with a door wide open as 
the Kingdom of Heaven, from which nothing 
but an unchristian spirit can exclude me. In the 
beginning of my mission, I had preached regu- 
larly at the old Salem school-house for a long 
time when one of my auditors, the late Curtis 
Hombeck, Esq., father of Rev. Marcus D. 
Hombeck, now a prominent Methodist minister 
of Denver, Colorado, said to me one day: 
" Brother Douthit, you are the queerest 

[ 165 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

preacher I ever knew. Here you have been 
preaching for two years and have never once 
given any of us a chance to join the church. If 
you had, myself and wife and all my family 
would have joined, but now we have joined 
another church." 

I am convinced that as a rule it is better for 
people to become members of some church than 
to be habitual non-church goers, or religious 
tramps. I have observed that children of Prot- 
estant families who have united with the Catho- 
lic church have been better, other things being 
equal, than the children of Protestants that 
grow up without any church association. Oft- 
times when I have been going many miles over 
bad roads to meet my appointments, I have met, 
going or coming. Catholic friends who must 
travel long distances to attend their morning 
services at church, while at the same time, some 
persons calhng themselves Unitarians, who lived 
near church and who would go twice as far over 
bad roads on week days to serve themselves and 
for pleasure, were absent from their church serv- 
ice because of the bad roads, the inclement 
weather, a Sunday headache, or a social visit. 

For the fifty years I have been preaching, 
I never knew a family, to the best of my knowl- 

[ 166 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

edge and belief, that habitually neglected 
church duties which did not degenerate in morals 
and manners, and become worse than their 
fathers and mothers, — worse even though 
" smart " and educated, in a sense. The more 
respectable such persons, the more mischievous 
their examples and influence on society. 

" There are two freedoms," says Charles 
Kingsley, " the false, where a man is free to 
do what he likes ; the true, where a man is free 
to do what he ought." 

Non-observance of Sunday and the non- 
church going habit have been among my great- 
est causes of discouragement. Out-spoken op- 
position and bitter persecution are not so hurt- 
ful as the selfish indifference of professed 
friends of a good cause. 

We read that Jesus " went into the synagogue 
on the Sabbath day, as his custom was." But 
I have found many people who profess to be 
sincere followers of Christ who when in 
distress will send for a minister, and yet who 
will on the Sabbath day follow a custom 
directly contrary to the example of Jesus. 
They will substitute visits and feasts for church- 
going. Sometimes people use Sunday for labor 
that could better be done on week days, and they 

[ 167 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

cannot go to church because they must take 
an ox out of the pit which they put in on 
Saturday, or had neglected all the week to take 
out. I think of communities destitute of 
church services where there might now be 
flourishing congregations if the people had 
formed the habit of attending public worship 
on the Sabbath. I write with deep feeling 
on this subject. My mother in heaven was 
during much of her life, a slave to the kitchen 
on Sunday, cooking over a hot, open fire- 
place, and often having no chance for church 
or rest. Therefore, for many years, I have 
made it a rule not to accept invitations to din- 
ner on Sunday where I knew some of the family 
were kept from church to prepare it. Not that 
I object to dinners or social visits, but I do 
earnestly protest against the discouraging, 
soul-starving and church-killing habit of 
staying away from church for a Sunday pleas- 
ure excursion, or to cook and eat; or to trade 
or do any work that could as well be done some 
other day. In fact I have known the morals 
of more than one community blighted by the 
habit of manual labor or horse-racing and ball 
games on Sunday. The following is a record 
of the diary of my brother George. I give 

[ 168 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

it as illustrating a not unusual scene in the 
earlj years of my work: 

"Sunday, June 16th, 1867:— I went with 
Jasper to Salem. He preached about a man's 
social nature, — his duty of cultivating and ex- 
ercising it by worshiping God together on Sun- 
days. The folks around here have become so in- 
dustrious, it would seem, that they have no time 
to cultivate anything, unless it would be a patch 
of com, or to plant any kind of seed on the 
Sabbath, except com. There are eight teams 
within a mile of here at work today. There 
would appear to be some plausible excuse for 
working to-day, it being so late in the season. 
But I think they will lose more than they will 
gain. They will lower their moral nature; and 
in the very act of doing so they will plant seeds 
of thorns that will ultimately grow and prick 
them sore. They may raise better com ; but if 
they do, it will be so much the worse, it will be 
increasing an already too large acquisitiveness 
at the expense of their higher nature. 



j> 



In every case I now remember, that prophecy 
of my brother, made over forty years ago when 
he was nineteen years old, has proved true. 
Yes, " God made the Sabbath for man." That 
is, he has made one day in seven for man to use 
mostly for rest and public worship, — made this 

[ 169 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

a law of necessity in human nature, and if this 
law is violated a bitter harvest must be reaped 
sooner or later. No man can habitually defy 
that custom of Jesus without being worse for 
it. 

While most of my labors have been in this 
county of Shelby, yet in the early years I 
preached in the towns along the line of the 
IHinois Central Railroad, main trunk and 
branch, from Decatur and Champaign south- 
ward to Centralia, and also on the Indianapolis, 
Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis line, from 
Charleston in eastern Illinois to Litchfield in 
the west. The managers of the above roads 
kindly gave me free passage. 

During the first few years of my charge in 
Shelbyville, at the urgent request of Dr. E. E. 
Hale and others, I tried to act as a state mis- 
sionary for Illinois. I kept up the services in 
Shelby County, and preached also in Jackson- 
ville, Alton, Hillsboro, Pana, Decatur, Farina, 
Centralia, Eflingham, Charleston, Urbana and 
Champaign, the seat of the state University. 
At the two last named cities I had the hearty co- 
operation of the then president of the Uni- 
versity, Dr. Peabody, and others of the Board 
of Instruction. But I broke down at such 

[ no ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



work. There was not enough of me to go 
around. Finally I concentrated my effort in 
Shelbyville and the vicinity, using Our Best 
Words as an arm to reach out to the acquaint- 
ances made over the state. I felt a stronger call 
to preach to the people that would gather to 
hear me in the school-houses and out-door 
meetings in the vicinity of my birthplace, 
though certainly money was never an element of 
strength to this call. 

This home mission has been to me a high 
calling of God. I have by invitation preached 
in churches in the larger cities of the nation, 
such as Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Toledo, 
Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, 
Milwaukee, St. Louis, Louisville, New Orleans, 
and other cities. I can truthfully say, I have 
never anywhere nor at any time felt more hon- 
ored before God than in preaching to Irish- 
Catholics and other neighbors at Log Church; 
and never have felt so loud a call anywhere as at 
places like the old whiskey-haunted court- 
house in Shelbyville. 

There are a few things which may seem 
trifling in themselves which I will mention as 
showing the progress of ideas here since the 
mission began and in which it has led. 

[ ni ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

The first time I ever saw flowers in a church 
in Illinois was in the little school-house where 
we first held Unitarian services before we had 
any house of worship. The school-teacher, 
who was an eastern woman, had gathered some 
crab-apple, red-bud, plum-tree and other blos- 
soms, and put them in an old tin can on the 
desk in front of me. When I went to the desk 
to begin services, a good old brother from the 
rear of the house came up, and said, " I'll put 
these things out of your way." Suiting the 
action to the words, he threw the buds and 
blossoms out of the window, and put the can 
under the desk. It was taken as a matter of 
course by the assembly. I was somewhat em- 
barrassed, but proceeded with the service as well 
as I could. This incident fitly illustrates the 
only kind of theology I heard until I was seven- 
teen years old, — a theology that hid the bright 
things of earth and made it as bare and for- 
bidding and as much a vale of tears as pos- 
sible. 

The first Easter service I ever knew observed 
by any other church than Catholics was by our 
little assembly of Unitarians. In commemora- 
tion of the first Easter morning at the sepulchre, 
a meeting conducted b^' the pastor has been held 

[ 172 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

in the Unitarian Church in Shelbyville, every 
year since the church was built in 1876. The 
first Christmas tree that I ever saw in Illinois 
was in the Unitarian Sunday-school. The first 
Thanksgiving service held in response to the 
President's proclamation in Shelby County, out- 
side of Shelbyville, was held in our Oak Grove 
Chapel. We held services of mercy and dis- 
tributed Our Dumb Animals for years before 
others recognized that religion had enough 
bearing on kindness to animals to call for a 
special service. The first time I ever knew of 
" Nearer my God to Thee " being sung in this 
vicinity, was in the old Log Church by my 
brother George, who had been at Antioch Col- 
lege and had brought it home with him. The 
first memorial service held in the county for 
a Union soldier was held by the Unitarian mis- 
sionary. 

I remember when funeral sermons were 
preached some time after the burial it was cus- 
tomary to sing, " Hark ! from the Tombs a Dole- 
ful Sound," but I have not heard that hymn 
for forty years. Instead they sing the hymns 
and songs of brighter hope, such as " One 
Sweetly Solemn Thought," and " Lead Kindly 
Light." Now flowers provoke sweet thoughts 

[ 173 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

in all the churches ; and many of them have a 
special " Flower Service," and vie with each 
other in celebrating Easter and Christmas ; and 
we have had union Thanksgiving services, where 
Catholics, Unitarians and orthodox joined. 

I have tried to circulate only such literature 
as would have a tendency to liberate Christians 
and Christianize " liberals." The result has 
been a wonderful change in the attitude of the 
churches of all denominations in the vicinity, 
including the Catholic. Some of my best 
friends have been the orthodox pastors and the 
Catholic priests. 

We have built in this mission four church 
edifices in Shelby County, the largest being a 
substantial brick structure costing six thousand 
dollars, and three of wood, costing eight hun- 
dred dollars, fifteen hundred dollars and twelve 
hundred dollars each, besides one in Mattoon 
costing ten thousand dollars, and a tabernacle 
at Lithia Springs for our summer meetings, 
seating fifteen hundred. This auditorium has 
recently been greatly improved at a cost of six- 
teen hundred dollars, or more. In addition to 
the above, the Library Chapel at Lithia was 
dedicated in August, 1904. 

The American Unitarian Association now 

[ n4 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

holds in trust for missionary purposes the two 
hundred acres of Lithia Spring* land and the 
improvements thereon, worth twenty thousand 
dollars at a low estimate, the church edifice and 
lot within a square of the court-house in Shelby- 
ville, valued at five thousand dollars, the Jordan 
Chapel and lot within two miles of Lithia 
Springs, valued at fifteen hundred dollars, and 
the Library Chapel, at Lithia, valued at twelve 
hundred dollars. 

I have always insisted that the people of the 
community should build their house of worship 
themselves. I never solicited outside aid for 
a church edifice except in one instance, and I 
have that to regret. This was the case of Unity 
church at Mattoon. It was built at the close of 
the Civil War, when material was very high, so 
that it was said to have cost nearly ten thousand 
dollars. It was then and thus built against 
my advice. However, a pathetic appeal from 
the late Thomas P. C. Lane, the prime mover 
for the building, prompted me to help free 
it of debt. Mr. Lane was plunged suddenly 
into deep sorrow by the death of his little 
daughter, Nina. He wished the church to be a 
memorial of her. Therefore, to help lift the 
debt on the church, I received fifteen hundred 

[ 175 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



dollars from Mrs. Anna Richmond, of Provi- 
dence, R. I., Miss Dorothea Dix, members of 
Robert Colly er's Church of the Messiah, N. Y., 
and others; and by the advice of Dr. Wm. G. 
Eliot I paid this money to the trustees of the 
]\Iattoon church with the stipulation that in case 
the building ever ceased for the term of two 
years to be used for Unitarian services, and the 
property should revert and be sold, the fifteen 
hundred dollars should be applied to general mis- 
sionary work in the state of Illinois. The 
building did cease to be thus used and the prop- 
erty was sold in 1906; but I am informed that 
the trustees think best to put on interest the 
fifteen hundred dollars for a time, with the rest 
of the funds from the sale, in the hope that op- 
portunity may j^et offer for building another 
Unitarian edifice in that enterprising city. I 
must think there would be more practical 
religion in at once applying the money ac- 
cording to the above stipulation to the sup- 
port of some good, live Christian missionary in 
this state. If the people are filled with the 
spirit of Christ, the necessary churches will be 
built as naturally as the bark grows on living 
trees. Spirit controls matter, — not matter 
spirit. A costly church building, with few or 

[ 176 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

no worshipers, is like a mighty ship of war with 
few or none to man it. 

As nearly as I can estimate, over one thou- 
sand persons have been received into church 
membership under my ministry in this vicinity, 
two hundred children christened, nearly one 
thousand funerals attended, and about four 
hundred marriage ceremonies performed. 
Many of those to whom I have ministered have 
passed from earth. And a great number of 
those who have united in church covenant are 
scattered abroad in the different states from 
Massachusetts Bay to " where rolls the Ore- 
gon," and from the Dakotas on the north to 
Texas in the south. 

One object which at the beginning I con- 
fidently hoped to achieve in this mission was to 
establish at least one self-supporting congre- 
gation. I confess that the failure to do this 
has been the saddest, sorest disappointment of 
my forty-five years' missionary effort. How- 
ever, with a consciousness of having done what 
I could for the right as God gave me to see the 
right, I am content to leave results with Him. 

INIy work has been largely of a social settle- 
ment character, with a religious emphasis, and 
mostly in rural districts. I have preached to 

[ 177 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



tenants, wage-workers, and people on the wing; 
so that, from year to year, my congregations 
have come and gone. Young people, ambitious 
to rise in the world, have passed on to where 
they hoped for more advantages. But alas ! 
some have overlooked the fact that the only way 
to really rise in this world or the next, is to 
live a good life. I am thinking of some 
who have gone to large cities who would better 
be cultivating the fertile land and raising fruits 
and poultry near Lithia Springs. 

It has been my lot to draw mostly poor 
people, — wage-workers and tenants, — with few 
owners of their own homes, into church mem- 
bership. Free thinkers or agnostics, who 
could not honestly assent to the creeds of the 
popular churches, have occasionally been drawn 
into our fellowship. No wealthy persons and 
none who have sought first for fashionable 
society and soft seats have identified themselves 
with my congregations, although a goodly num- 
ber of my people have become influential and 
noted as teachers, editors and reformers. But 
while there is a membership of several hundred 
scattered over this and other states, the num- 
ber in the immediate vicinity is small. 

[ 178 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Dr. Wm. G. Eliot, of the Church of the Mes- 
siah and Chancellor of Washington University, 
St. Louis, Mo., was my wise and fatherly adviser 
in mission work for years before he was trans- 
lated. I remember once going to him disheart- 
ened, and almost persuaded to abandon the mis- 
sion. The support had fallen off and my con- 
gregations grown small, as they have often 
done, and then grown up again. I asked him 
what I should do. " Are you sure," inquired 
the Chancellor, " that you are pleading for the 
highest character and purest standard of public 
morals ? " I replied : " I have been trying my 
best to do that and it seems that has caused 
several people to turn away from me ! " " Very 
well, then," said the Chancellor, " stick, and 
don't worry! Be of good courage! The Uni- 
tarian misson stands for character and the best 
quality of work rather than for quantity or a 
great following. Only do your part well, and 
leave results to God. I will help you all I can." 

One of the oldest and most trusted citizens of 
central Illinois, distinguished in his profes- 
sion and a member of one of the oldest churches, 
recently volunteered to testify substantially as 
follows : 

[ 179 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

" If Jasper Douthit had just preached the 
gospel and not made such a crusade against 
liquor license and other social evils, but instead 
had done more proselyting and persuaded peo- 
ple to join the Unitarian Church, he might have 
had a strong, self-supporting congregation in 
Shelbyville. However, I incline to believe the 
course he has pursued had done more good to 
everybody among all the churches and parties. 
His work has been leavening the whole com- 
munity, killing religious bigotry and partisan 
prejudice, and has been most effective for moral 
reform." 



[ 180 ] 



XIII 

One Sunday morning about the year 1865, at 
the close of a little meeting in Dole's Hall, Mat- 
toon, a young man introduced himself to me 
as Lyman Clark. He had come on horseback 
from twelve miles south to hear me preach. He 
told me he was thinking seriously of the min- 
istry, and inquired about the Meadville Theo- 
logical School. He had served valiantly, as I 
afterwards learned, in the Union army. He 
went four years to Meadville and graduated in 
1869. He had parishes at Jacksonville, 111., 
Lancaster, N. H., Petersham, Mass., Ayer, 
Mass., and at Andover, N. H,, and served these 
different parishes for twenty-five years. 
During his pastorate at Petersham he ren- 
dered valuable service as member of the State 
Legislature. Two of his sons are graduates of 
Harvard University, and one of them, Rev. 
Albert W. Clark, is a most worthy young min- 
ister and present pastor of the Unitarian Church 
at Schenectady, N. Y. 

James Brown, of Mode, Shelby County, was 
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JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

ordained March 11, 1877, in the Unitarian 
Church at Shelbyville at the hands of the late 
Brooke Herford of England, John H. Heywood 
of Louisville, Ky., and other ministers. Mr. 
Brown served the little flocks at Mode for nearly 
a score of years, and preached in the country 
school-houses round about, meanwhile sup- 
porting himself and family by hard work at 
wagon-making. He died March 31, 1902, at 
the age of 58 years. 

Rev. Napoleon Hoagland, now minister at 
Tyngsboro, Mass., came, when a small boy, to 
hear me preach at the school-house near Mode, 
before the Union church was built. He was the 
picture then, in my mind, of Whittier's " Bare- 
foot Boy," — and bareheaded also, — but a 
good boy. He studied with me and my wife at 
our home, and then entered the Meadville 
School ; graduating after four years, in 1885. 
He has served parishes at Greeley, Colo. ; 
Wichita, Kansas ; Olympia, Washington ; Prov- 
idence, R. I. ; Marslifield, Mendon and War- 
wick, Mass. He has ever been a constant friend 
and helper of the mission around his birthplace. 
His mother was a devout and noble woman, and 
my schoolmate at Shelby Academy, over fifty 
years ago. 

[ 182 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Rev. Ada H. Kepley, of Effingham, Illinois, 
was ordained In the Unitarian Church at Shelby- 
ville, on July 24, 1892. Rev. W. H. Lloyd of 
the Presbyterian church, Shelbyville; Rev. T. B. 
Forbush and Rev. John H. Heywood took part 
in the services. Mrs. Kepley had been a mem- 
ber of the Unitarian church for many years. 
She had been a most active and self-sacrificing 
worker in the temperance and social purity 
reforms in her home county and throughout 
the state. She was before, as since her ordina- 
tion, practically a minister at large in Effingham 
and adjoining counties. She edited and pub- 
lished, at a sacrifice, the Friend of Home for 
many years. It was one of the brightest and 
best temperance monthlies in the country. She 
was a close co-worker with the saintly Frances 
E. Willard and received high praise from Miss 
Willard for specially heroic service. Sister 
Kepley has most unselfishly served others all 
these years " without pay and without price." 

Her husband, the late Henry B. Kepley, Esq., 
President of the Board of Trustees of Austin 
College, was in full sympathy with Mrs. Kep- 
ley's work. He too was a member of the Uni- 
tarian congregation of Shelbyville. He built 
at his own expense a chapel in the heart of the 

[ 183 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

city of Effingham, which was called " The 
Temple." It was for Mrs. Kepley's use and 
dedicated to mission, Sunday-school and gospel 
temperance purposes. 

Rev. Ollie Cable Green is a teacher in the 
public schools at Winchester, 111., and also 
public librarian. She united with the Uni- 
tarian Church, Shelby ville. In 1885. She was 
ordained by the United Brethren Church before 
she became a member of my congregation. She 
was a valuable assistant to me for several years 
in this mission. She has taught in the primary 
department of the public schools of Illinois for 
a score of years. She has made a heroic effort 
to rear and educate a family of useful children, 
one of whom is named after James Freeman 
Clarke. During part of her career as a teacher 
she has supplied the pulpit for the Universal- 
ists and some other denominations in the places 
where she has taught. While true to her colors 
as a Unitarian, she Is In no sense a contro- 
versialist, but is deeply religious and is fre- 
quently welcomed to preach in orthodox pulpits. 

My son, Robert Collyer Douthit, began mis- 
sion work with his father as a printer boy, and 
served as a foreman in Our Best Words office 
when the paper had the largest circulation. 

[ 184 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Ten thousand copies of one issue were circulated 
over this and adjacent counties during the fight 
against the saloon politics and the treating 
custom. During these years, we also published 
" Old Shelby Seminary Memorial " and other 
books. But the printer boy felt called to the 
ministry. He took a four years' course in 
Meadville Theological School,- graduating in 
1893. After graduating, he served acceptably 
the Unitarian parishes in Baraboo, Wis., and 
Petersham, Mass. Then, for about two years, 
he had charge of the congregations in this 
mission, meantime also assisting at Lithia 
Springs Chautauqua, besides editing and 
printing Our Best Words. Then for health's 
sake he returned East and was minister of the 
church at Dover, Mass., for nearly three years. 
He is now pastor of the first parish in Castine, 
Maine. 

There is also Colonel Sobieski, now of Los 
Angeles, California, a descendant of the famous 
King John Sobieski of Poland. Colonel So- 
bieski has been a member of the Shelbyville 
Church for twelve years, and though not for- 
mally ordained, yet since his connection with the 
Unitarian church he has been essentially a Chris- 
tian minister, " after the order of Melchisedek, 

[ 185 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

King of Salem." When this (at that time) 
young Pohsh prince was shot through the body 
and lay bleeding on the battle-field of Gettys- 
burg, he was pronounced mortally wounded by 
the surgeon, whereupon the chaplain advised him 
to make his peace with God. Colonel Sobieski 
replied quickly in broken English : " I have 
never had any fuss with God." All who knew 
Colonel Sobieski intimately would say he spoke 
the truth. He has been a loving disciple of the 
** Prince of Peace " all his life. He has traveled 
extensively pleading for temperance reform and 
has spoken oftener and in more states for good- 
will to man than any other living American. He 
is still at it. He ministers at funerals and is 
often called to occupy on Sundays the pulpits of 
different churches. He always speaks out 
bravely, but most kindly and wisely, for " pure 
religion and perfect liberty," and the people 
hear him gladly. Though unlettered in a sense, 
never having gone to school a day in his life, 
yet, in the best sense he is broadly cultured and 
charms with his pleasing manners, his eloquence 
and, most of all, his Chistian spirit. He is a 
missionary for whom we all thank God, while we 
pray for more of the same kind. He was for 
many of the early years, the platform manager 

[ 186 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

at Lithia Springs Chautauqua, and to his 
very unselfish service and wise counsel must be 
credited much of the real success of that enter- 
prise. 

My relations with orthodox ministers have 
been from the first remarkably friendly, con- 
sidering how frankly I have dissented from the 
creeds of the churches. The first pastor of a 
Shelbyville church to propose a pulpit exchange 
with me was the pastor of the Second M. E. 
Church, Rev. James M. West, late of Blooming- 
ton, 111. The late Rev. James L. Crane, General 
Grant's close friend and chaplain in the Civil 
War, father of Drs. Frank Crane, of 
Worcester, Mass., and the late Charles Crane, 
of Boston, Mass., was one of the first Metho- 
dists I ever heard preach. He was pastor 
of the First Methodist church in the early years 
of my ministry in Shelbyville. Through his 
influence I was chosen president of the Shelby- 
ville Ministerial Union, the first club of the kind 
organized here, I believe, of which the pastors 
of all Protestant congregations in the city, ex- 
cepting perhaps one, were members. A few 
years since, and a while before he was promoted, 
the Methodist veteran and saint, Isaac Groves, 
at the age of eighty years, came from his home 

[ 187 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

in Urbana, Illinois, to visit me and preach in 
the pulpit of the " singular sheep " he baptised 
over two score years before. 

About the first local pastor to subscribe and 
insist on paying for Our Best Words, was a 
Catholic priest, and some of my best friends and 
helpers have been members of that church. In 
the early years of my anti-slavery work, the 
United Brethren were most loyal allies, as the 
Free Methodist brethren have been in my later 
crusade against the liquor traffic and kindred 
evils. The Christian Church in Shelbyville was 
often granted me for religious services more 
than twenty-five years ago, when many homes 
of worship in the county were closed against 
me. The late Elder Bushrod W. Henry was 
pastor of that congregation for several years. 
He performed the marriage ceremony for my 
parents, and always seemed glad to favor their 
son. 

However, occasionally, I have been furiously 
preached and prayed against. Once in a large 
meeting, years ago, a minister so loudly cursed 
me in his prayer that he was not wanted after- 
wards by a majorty of his parishioners. Some- 
times ministers have, for lack of information, so 
misrepresented the Unitarian position that I have 

[ 188 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

felt obliged to correct them publicly. Such waa 
the case when the late good Bishop Edward Ed- 
wards, of the United Brethren Church, came to 
this mission and unwittingly misrepresented 
Unitarians. I was present, took notes and 
publicly replied to his criticisms. I had a large 
hearing and was invited to repeat my reply 
again and again. Then, by the help of Robert 
CoUyer and his people of the Unity Churchj 
Chicago, my discourse was published and given 
a circulation of many thousand copies. I 
afterwards had the pleasure, through the kind- 
ness of Professor Huidekoper of Meadville, Pa., 
of placing in the hands of the bishop the works 
of Channing and other representative Unitar- 
ians. He thankfully received and promised to 
read them, and I trust was better informed. 

At another time the newly installed pastor of 
a local church, an honest and zealous minister, 
felt it his duty to have no fellowship with the 
Unitarian missionary, and he said so kindly in 
public. I admired his loyalty to conviction and 
his brave stand against public evils. I cultivated 
his acquaintance, but he was shy of me. He 
would not attend meetings over which I presided, 
until a temperance rally was arranged to meet 
in the Unitarian church with Governor John 

[ 189 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

P. St. John of Kansas as the speaker. Nearly 
all the ministers of the city were present, in- 
cluding this brother. He had said he could not 
call a Unitarian minister a " brother in Christ." 
Governor St. John's speech against the liquor 
evil proved a baptism of the Holy Spirit to most 
of us in that meeting. We were made one in 
purpose for the overthrow of the evil. I shall 
never forget how the minister who had been so 
shy of me, now reached across the seats to clasp 
my hand and say, " Brother Douthit, let's hold 
the next meeting in a larger church." It was 
the first time he had addressed me so frater- 
nally. Not long after that we were in the post- 
office together, when I received a letter with a 
horrid picture of a skull and cross-bones, threat- 
ening my life. " Will you let me have that to 
keep over Sunday .'' " asked this brother. I cheer- 
fully granted the request. In his sermon 
the next Sunday to a full house, including 
prominent saloon politicians, this minister 
held up before his congi'egation the picture 
of skull and cross-bones and read the threat, and 
then gave a most rousing sermon against the cor- 
rupt politics that would resort to such a method 
of argument. That good minister proved to be 
one of my best friends and pluckiest co-workers 

[ 190 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

for temperance and social purity. He tenderly 
assisted me at my father's funeral. He is now 
one of the ablest and most loved ministers of his 
denomination and a prominent Chautauqua 
worker. 

From the beginning of our meetings at Lithia 
Springs the pastors of the various churches of 
Shelbyville and vicinity, both Catholic and 
Protestant, have, to the best of my recollection, 
been constant, brotherly and prayerful co-work- 
ers with scarcely any exception. 

I was joined in the first basket-meeting at 
Lithia Springs in 1884 by two ministers in this 
vicinity with whom I had recently had some ex- 
tended controversy on points of doctrine 
through the local press. For this reason it 
was a matter of surprise and comment on the 
part of many people that this Elder and this 
Doctor should be the first persons to unite 
with the Unitarian minister in holding field 
meetings at Lithia Springs. But why should 
this be considered a strange thing? Cannot 
disciples of the same Master honestly differ 
and give reasons for their differences on some 
points, and yet be good friends and strong allies 
in preaching a common Christianity and re- 
sisting a common evil? 

[ 191 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

There is a beautiful tradition about such 
springs as these at Lithia, and others in southern 
Indiana and Illinois. The tradition is this: 
" When the Indians were at war with each other, 
no matter how fiercely the battle raged, they 
agreed that these springs should be neutral 
ground, and that whenever any of the warring 
tribes met here they should at least smoke the 
pipe of peace while they remained around the 
springs." 



[ 192 ] 



XIV 

The closing part of this story I devote to 
Lithia Springs and the Institution I have tried 
to found there. 

The Lithia Springs are about one mile and 
a half from where Log Church was, in an out- 
of-the-way place, no public road going nearer 
than a mile at the time of my early mission work 
at Log Church, and for many years after. 
Now roads are laid out on all sides, and the 
Big Four railroad station at MIddlesworth, is 
only a mile distant. Twenty years ago the 
estate, a rolling country of hills and glens and 
creek bottom lands, was covered with forest. It 
lay for three-fourths of a mile on each side 
of " Lick Branch," now called " Lithia Creek." 
This Is a water course of rapid fall, so that 
in sudden freshets it becomes a rushing tor- 
rent, but quickly subsides within a few hours 
so that It can be safely crossed on foot. This 
estate fell to me by Inheritance from my father 
in 1889. There was no fence enclosing it, and 
years ago wild deer, and later all sorts of 

[ 193 ] 



JASPER DOUTIIIT'S STORY 

domestic animals came to drink at the springs 
until they became a pond of mud. By and by 
one of the springs was protected by an old 
barrel with the bottom knocked out, and from 
this the people for miles around procured water 
to carry to their homes to drink. The springs 
came to be regarded as a necessity to the 
neighborhood for many miles about, in seasons 
of drouth, both for water for stock and for 
domestic use, and they were never known to fail 
in the dryest time. During a drouth many 
wagons would often be lined up waiting their 
tuiTi. Hidden away in the forest and with few 
homes near, it was a long time before the 
place was much known outside of the neighbor- 
hood. But gradually the beauties of the spot 
and the healthfulness of the water began to 
acquire more than a local fame, and by 1885, 
or thereabouts, it had become a popular camping 
and picnic resort. Then Satan got busy, and 
the sober and orderly were often kept away 
by those who congregated there, especially on 
Sundays, to drink and carouse, with no police- 
man to molest or make afraid. 

It had been my custom in the summer time 
all the years I lived in Shelbyville to speak 
frequently at basket meetings, as the all-day 

[ 194 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

picnics with social and religious services were 
called. Some of these were annual occasions 
in which people of all the different religious 
bodies in the vicinity united. I came to have 
more calls to address these picnics and basket 
meetings than I could accept. I saw that 
Lithia Springs would be an ideal place for such 
gatherings. 

With the co-operation of Elder L. M. Linn, 
a rough and plucky hater of the saloon, 
and others of the Christian Church, a basket 
meeting was held there on Sunday, August 31, 
1884. Christians of all denominations joined 
heartily in the services. Two thousand people 
were reported to be present. In the afternoon 
a temperance service which I had prepared and 
printed was used, and hosts of people bore 
testimony in behalf of temperance by spirited 
singing while the congregation filed by the min- 
isters in charge and clasped hands in token of 
their desire and purpose to pull together in 
resisting the Devil and building up the Kingdom 
of God. Then other meetings were held. On 
Sunday, August 9, 1885, Rev. J. T. Sunder- 
land, then Secretary of the Western Unitarian 
Conference, preached there in the morning and 
assisted in interesting services for the children 

[ 195 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

in the afternoon. At these meetings there were 
only old logs and the grass about the springs 
for seats and the blue sky for canopy. 

In November, 1889, soon after the death of 
my father, I was given possession of part of 
that tract of land, the first land I ever owned. 
I say a " part " of that tract, because I 
bought 100 acres more which has greatly ad- 
vanced in value. I was not expecting to inherit 
any real estate, and I had made up my mind to 
be content without it. In fact, I rather en- 
joyed singing, or trying to sing, as I rode on 
horseback, or walked to my appointments, those 
verses of the pioneer Methodist preacher: 

" No foot of land do I possess. 
Nor cottage in the wilderness." 

When the partitioners of the estate set apart 
this Lithia Springs ground to my share, I was 
grateful in a sense, yet, in another sense, I 
was a little unhappy that I could not now 
honestly sing the old song. 

My father had owned the springs from the 
time the Indians left. They had very precious 
associations for me. The land was that over 
which my mother had carried me as she gathered 
the sap from the maple trees around them 

[ 196 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

to make the yearly supply of sweets for the 
family table; and now I craved to live long 
enough to see it consecrated forever as holy 
ground, made too pure to ever tolerate in any 
form that which had caused my mother so much 
distress, destroyed so many homes, and blasted 
the lives of so many of my neighbors and 
relatives. 

There was no income to be derived from 
the grounds, which were wild, unfenced, unculti- 
vated. The neighbors only thought of them 
as a fine farm in the rough, and especially valu- 
able for stock because of the rare water supply, 
but I only thought of how I might conse- 
crate the ground to the mission of my life. It 
seemed to me that here was an opportunity to 
estabhsh some form of work or beneficent in- 
stitution that would become a permanent 
rallying center for practical religion. What 
form it might take I did not know. I must 
make the venture walking by faith and not by 
sight. I must make the start alone and without 
even the approval of prudent business men. 

The first thing to be done was to prepare 
the place to hold meetings. I was moneyless 
and with insufficient salary for even living ex- 
penses. I had not ten dollars capital to begin 

[ 197 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

with. Therefore I borrowed on the land as 
security enough money to fence it, clear a part 
of the dense underbrush around the springs, 
build a shelter over the springs and wall with 
tile. By the middle of the summer of 1890, 
with the help of generous neighbors, we had 
completed a large covered shed or wigwam with 
open sides, later called the " tabernacle " or 
auditorium, to hold meetings in. 

I determined that our nation's birthday 
should be kept in one place in Shelby County at 
a safe distance from those plague spots, the 
saloons. Therefore, to begin with, I invited 
everybody to a free Fourth of July picnic at 
Lithia Springs, and there was a mighty re- 
sponse. The papers reported ten thousand 
people present. The woods were full of people, 
and many pretty trees were spoiled by the 
horses. 

There was still a mountain of prejudice and 
long prevailing custom to overcome. Old resi- 
dents of the vicinity contended that the springs 
must not be fenced from the public. It was 
claimed that they must remain forever as free as 
the air to everybody. The only road to thera 
ran diagonally across the land, as it had run, 
for aught I know, since the Indians made the 

[ 198 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

trail; and, strange to say, a majority of the 
township commissioners encouraged by pubhc 
sentiment insisted that it must continue to go 
that way instead of on the section line. They 
claimed that for the convenience of the public 
the road must run so as to include the springs ; 
that the owner of the land had no right to en- 
close and control that water. It should be free 
to all people at all times as it always had been, — 
and certainly no temperance crank should be al- 
lowed to control it. That would interfere with 
" personal liberty." The case actually went to 
the courts. Finally the Shelby County Board 
of Supervisors, — the county legislature, — ap- 
pointed three of its members as a jury, or court, 
before which the case should be tried. The court 
was convened, seated on old logs about the 
springs. Many people were present. Hon. Geo. 
D. Chafee, now senator, my most faithful friend 
from the beginning, was attorney for the owner 
of the land, and Col. L. B. Stephenson, then of 
St. Louis, for the road commissioners. After 
much testimony and eloquent pleading, the ver- 
dict was that the springs might be enclosed and 
the road changed to the section line. 

The first ten days' encampment was held in 
August, 1891, and was conducted mostly by 

[ 199 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

workers for temperance and kindred reforms 
as advocated by the Woman's Christian Tem- 
perance Union. Miss Frances E. Willard, was 
to me and my wife the patron saint of this 
mission for nearly thirty years. She seemed 
to have a special interest in Our Best Words and 
the mission work since the first and only time 
she visited Shelbyville, near the beginning of 
her wonderful career. It so happened at that 
visit that I was the only minister to be on the 
platform with her and assist in the meeting by 
prayer. I remember how she hastened to clasp 
my hand at the close of her address and say : 
" Well, I am so thankful to have had the 
presence and prayer of at least one minister at 
this meeting." There was a trembling and 
pathos in her voice as she spoke that I shall 
never forget. 

From that time until she was promoted, 
saying : *' How beautiful it is to be with God," 
she wrote me often, and I never had such a 
prompt con'ospondent with any busy person, 
unless it was Dr. Henry W. Bellows of All 
Souls Church, New York. I am moved to give 
place here to one of her letters. From her 
home in Evanston in 1894, she wrote: 

[ 200 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

" Dear Brother, — 

" I have your unique paper, and I can but 
feel that if every paper in this country were at 
the same high level we would be on the high road 
to the millenium. You know that I am in the 
heartiest sympathy with you in all your great 
and beautiful work. All women owe you their 
thanks. We are in a great battle wherever we 
may be, and I think you feel as I do, that those 
who care for the same things and do the same 
work are really always in the same world of 
thought and growth. 

" And believe me always, 

" Yours with sisterly regard, 

" Frances E . Willard." 

About half a dozen families tented on the 
grounds at the first Assembly while we held 
meetings day and evening for the ten days ; and 
the number of tenters steadily increased from 
year to year until there were a thousand or 
more. 

It is the testimony of many of wide obser- 
vation that the place is ideal for camping and 
Chautauqua purposes. The breezes are always 
cooler and more constant here in summer than on 
the prairie, the scenery is beautiful, the soil dry, 
sandy and well drained, with no mud a few 

[ 201 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

hours after the heaviest rain. It is healthful, 
almost free from mosquitoes, and far away 
from the vicious influences of the city, the 
bustle of trade and the fashionable " resorts," 
just the place where whole families may gather, 
in love of nature and truth, and dwell in sweet 
simplicity to learn from the wisest and best men 
and women of earth lessons of health, virtue and 
happiness. The water is equal to any in the 
country for medicinal and health-giving qual- 
ities, and of just the right temperature to drink. 

Nearly if not quite every plant, tree and 
flower that grows in the Mississippi valley may 
be found about these springs ; and Prof. 
Leander S. Keyser, the popular author on orni- 
thology, who spent a week on the grounds, 
says there are probably two hundred varieties of 
birds here during the year. During the last 
eighteen years they have been specially pro- 
tected and undisturbed on the grounds, so that 
they have increased in number and grown re- 
markably tame. 

Many have said in substance what Booker 
T. Washington wrote : " I have visited few 
spots anywhere in the world that possess such 
charms, such an influence for good in every 
direction as is true of Lithia Springs." And 

[ 202 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

Commander Ballington Booth testified: "I 
have seen some beautiful assembly grounds. 
But I must say that I have yet to see a place 
that is more picturesque and seems more fitted 
by nature for the purpose to which this spot 
has been consecrated." 

As before stated, beginning with 1891, 
annual ten-day assemblies were held. These first 
assemblies were of the old-fashioned camp-meet- 
ing order. The time of the encampment was 
later increased to fifteen days, and, at the sug- 
gestion of Chaplain C. C. McCabe, afterwards 
Bishop, who came to help several times, I planned 
to have the institution become a part of the great 
Chautauqua system, a real national Chautauqua, 
and one that should be a credit to the Unitarian 
mission and name. But this meant more ex- 
pense for schools, lectures, and a high class of 
entertainments. It meant more buildings. It 
meant more systematic school work, especially 
for the young, combined with recreation. 

In a circular letter dated November 10, 1898, 
to the friends of the mission in the Unitarian 
body, my wife and I offered to take less than 
half price for the estate if ten thousand dollars 
could be raised for it at once, saying that we 
hoped the enterprise, conducted as it had been, 

[ 203 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

might become self-supporting. Thereupon Dr. 
Edward Everett Hale made an enthusiastic ap- 
peal through the Christian Register, recom- 
mending that the offer be accepted; but a year 
passed, and there was surprisingly little response 
to the appeal. 

At the annual Lithia Assembly in August, 
1899, the party Prohibitionists in council on the 
ground made a move to purchase one hundred 
acres at my price, one hundred dollars per acre. 
This movement of the Prohibitionists w^as led by 
the Hon. Hale Johnson, now of sainted memory, 
the noble and beloved candidate for Vice Presi- 
dent, who was shot dead by an insane man when 
he was trying to befriend him. 

I was on the point of completing the bar- 
gain with Mr. Johnson when my wife and I were 
advised by Ballington Booth and other friends 
that, as we wished so much to keep the Chau- 
tauqua under the auspices of the denomination 
with which we had labored so long, there should 
be another effort to that end. Hon. George 
E. Adams, of Chicago, Vice President of the 
American Unitarian Association, was in camp at 
the time. My wife and I conferred with him, 
and he assured us that he would favor bringing 
the matter of raising a Lithia Springs fund be- 

[ 204 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

fore the next National Conference of Unitarian 
and other Christian Churches, which was to meet 
in Washington, D. C, October, 1899. 

We decided to act upon Mr. Adams's sug- 
gestion. Accordingly at the meeting in Wash- 
ington by motion of Mr. Hale, seconded by Mr. 
Adams and others, the movement to raise a 
fund for Lithia Springs was endorsed by the 
Conference at Washington, the late Hon. 
George F. Hoar, United States Senator from 
Massachusetts, presiding. I then and there pro- 
posed that if eight thousand dollars, estimated 
to be half the value of two hundred acres, could 
be raised immediately we would give a deed for 
two hundred acres to the American Unitarian 
Association. Dr. Hale and others favored the 
raising of the sum right in that Conference, 
but the business was placed in the hands of a 
committee. It was my understanding that the 
committee would convene immediately and sub- 
mit a plan for raising the eight thousand dollars 
by the close of the Conference. Therefore, 
though urgent duties called me home, I remained 
in the city two days and nights longer expecting 
the sum to be subscribed. Imagine my chagrin 
when nothing was done. 

Finally, through the co-operation of the 
[ 205 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



Women's National Alliance and the energetic 
push of Rev. Charles E. St. John, Secretary of 
the American Unitarian Association, who visited 
the Chautauqua in 1900, a fund of eight thou- 
sand dollars was completed, and in April, two 
years after the Conference at Washington, a 
deed was given by my wife and myself to the 
American Unitarian Association for two hun- 
dred acres of Lithia Springs ground, with spe- 
cial contract and lease for the purpose of con- 
tinuing the Chautauqua work. 

It will be noticed that instead of ten thousand 
dollars for two hundred and sixty acres, eight 
thousand dollars was raised for two hundred 
acres. During the three years of uncertainty, 
with seven per cent, interest to pay and the in- 
creasing necessity of keeping up a high stand- 
ard for the Assembly, thus holding the vantage 
already gained, my debts had increased so that 
there was a balance of forty-two hundred dollars 
unpaid. And now, largely in consequence of 
these uncertainties and delays in raising the 
fund, my worst fears were realized by the an- 
nouncement that a rival Assembly was incorpo- 
rated to be held at the old Fair Grounds, by some 
money loaners and church members not in sym- 
pathy with my religious views or my fight 

[ 206 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

against the drink evil. The saloon keepers were 
elated. The promoters of the new enterprise 
had practically unlimited capital, and they pre- 
pared to spend it freely. An auditorium cost- 
ing some eight thousand dollars was built, the 
grounds were improved and beautified with an 
artificial lake, and they have yearly engaged 
some of the costliest talent in the nation and 
some good preachers and lecturers, many of 
whom are not aware of what they do. The 
promoters were men who knew nothing of the 
real Chautauqua movement. They thought I 
had been making money and that rivalry was 
just as legitimate in this as in other enterprises. 
Thus, while those true to Chautauqua princi- 
ples, at home and abroad, have given us sym- 
pathy and help in our struggle, the press in 
this section being outspoken in regard to the 
" mean trick " in opposition to Lithia, yet great 
numbers went to see the crowd and the show at 
the Fair Grounds. Thus the future of Lithia 
Chautauqua was clouded. I doubt not that in 
various ways the opposition has cost us thou- 
sands of dollars. 

In the face of the depressing financial pros- 
pect in 1901, when kind contributors thought 
the outlook bright and many friends thought 

[ 207 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

the whole matter settled satisfactorily, I was 
menaced by this wealthy and unscrupulous riv- 
alry. Thus it will be seen why, when the time 
came for dedication of the grounds in August, 
1901, my heart failed me. I advised with 
Rev. Henry H. Barber, who was with us, and 
he said : " Go on, I'll help you all I can." 
And so he did. I again took counsel of my 
hopes and not of my fears ; and the dedication 
took place, seemingly with flying colors, Sun- 
day, August 25, 1901. But while the people 
rejoiced, I wept in my tent. The principal ad- 
dress was made by INIrs. Laura Ormiston Chant 
of England, and pastors of the local churches 
were invited and took part in the exercises, be- 
sides many prominent helpers on the grounds. 

Chaplain, afterwards Bishop, McCabe spoke 
for us at one of the earlier Fourth of July 
celebrations. He was not a party prohibition- 
ist, but as soon as he saw what I was trying to 
do he said, " Brother Douthit, I want to help 
you," and he returned to me a large part of 
the first money I paid him for his very ac- 
ceptable services. " Why not start a Chau- 
tauqua here? " he said to me, " and let it be 
an inter-denominational and inter-partisan as- 
sembly? " " It is just what I have prayed for 

[ 208 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

these many years," I responded enthusiastically. 
" Give me your hand on that, and by the help 
of God it shall be." And so I added " Inter- 
denominational and Inter-partisan," to my 
watchwords as the gift of Chaplain McCabe, 
and he helped to bring his suggestions to pass, 
serving at the assemblies several times. But to 
be true to these principles at the beginning re- 
quired a struggle and loss of patronage. For 
instance, the first time our Catholic brethren 
were given the program for a day, many non- 
Catholics stayed away from the grounds and 
some people sulked in their tents. " It will ruin 
the Assembly to let in Catholics or colored 
people," was the cry. " Well then, it must be 
ruined," was the manager's reply. Nevertheless 
the number of campers increased. At some as- 
semblies of late years there has been an average 
attendance of fifteen hundred people daily; and 
It is the uniform testimony that there were 
never before in that part of Illinois so large a 
proportion of intelligent, kindly disposed, and 
well-bred men and women of all sects, Catho- 
lic and Protestant, all parties, classes, and of 
different races, brought together for such a 
length of time and with such harmony of spirit 
and purpose. 

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JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

They came from eight or ten of the sur- 
rounding states on railroads ; and they came in 
wagons, some from fifty and a hundred miles. 
At our annual assemblies people of all sects and 
races and from all sections have been welcomed 
to its privileges. On these grounds Jew and 
Gentile, Unitarian, Universalist and Catholic 
are treated with courtesy and good fellowship 
by people of orthodox churches. They attend 
the same classes. Many of them eat at the same 
table. They sing and pray together; they take 
counsel together and dwell in unity and peace 
with none to molest or make afraid. Thus the 
fellowship I had craved for a lifetime had come 
to pass on the holiest ground, to me, on earth. 

When the good name Chautauqua was being 
perverted for commercial purposes, Chancellor 
John H. Vincent and other leading workers for 
the time Chautauqua called a meeting in St. 
Louis in the fall of 1899 and organized the In- 
ternational Chautauqua Alliance, in order to 
prevent, so far as possible, fake enterprises 
under the name. The officers of this Alliance 
then chosen were men of different religious 
bodies, and for many years I was honored with 
the office of recording secretary, and later, for 
two years, with that of corresponding secretary. 

[ 210 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

I want to record the fact, that I never in my 
life associated with a nobler, more unselfish and 
brotherly body of men, on the whole, than 
were the members of this International Alliance. 
I was never treated more cordially by any body 
of people, religious or otherwise, though for 
most of the years of its existence I have been the 
only Unitarian Chautauqua manager in the Al- 
liance. Furthermore, I want to say that but 
for the quick sympathy and prompt and tactful 
co-operation of the members of this Alliance, 
represented by Bishop Vincent and his son Dr. 
George E. Vincent of the University of Chicago, 
Lithia Springs Chautauqua, with its very lim- 
ited resources, being without any endowment or 
capital, could not have survived to this day and 
won, against the wealthy local opposition, the 
high credit and prestige it now has among good 
people and the real Chautauqua workers of the 
world. 

The greatest strain of all my life was dur- 
ing the years 1901 to 1905, years which were the 
last my dear wife was to be with me on earth. 
She was an invalid now and needed my constant 
care; I must nurse and support her with one 
hand and with the other keep driving at work 
as hard as I could to save the cause from defeat. 

[ 211 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

This cause was the inspiring thought of the 
close of the many years of our hfe together; 
and she faithfully, sweetly, cheered me on to 
the last. It was in the early days of the As- 
sembly of 1905, August 1, at our cottage at 
Lithia Springs, that she left all she loved here 
in the fond trust, as I fully believe, that our 
hopes would triumph, and that all our labor, 
trials and sacrifices had not been for naught. 
Forty-eight years together, and nearly all the 
time actively engaged in our mission work. I 
emphasize and dwell lovingly on " our." 

How I got through the trials, uncertainties 
and perplexities of continuing the work I hardly 
know. It was much more of an uncertain 
struggle than the first period, because I had 
taken a great responsibility, much was expected 
of me, and I shrank from presenting the facts 
of the case to those who believed that in con- 
tributing to the eight thousand dollar fund they 
had done all that was asked and all that was 
needed. But somehow the high credit of the 
Chautauqua was sustained and necessary im- 
provements of great utility were added to the 
grounds. 

In 1905 I felt that I ought not to carry 
the load of uncertainty, perplexity and debt any 

[ 212 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

longer; forty-two hundred dollars in mortgages 
had remained since 1901 and had been increased 
by seven per cent, interest, and other ex- 
penses. But following a signed appeal by a 
score of friends of this mission in the Unitarian 
body, part of this sum was raised, to my great 
relief. 

The Lithia Springs Chautauqua Association, 
a local, non-profit sharing corporation was 
organized to take the financial responsibility of 
the enterprise. The business management of 
this body was unfortunate, for which I do not 
feel at all to blame, as my advice was not re- 
garded, though I had charge of the program as 
usual. But there was a notion that I was noth- 
ing but a preacher, and so the practical financial 
management was entrusted to others v/ho were 
wholly inexperienced in Chautauqua business 
and who thought they knew how to make it 
boom. The result was that on November 8, 
1907, this company relinquished the manage- 
ment, being in debt about twenty-five hundred 
dollars. Nevertheless, this well-meant effort re- 
sulted in some four thousand dollars voluntary 
donations by the people of this locality for im- 
provements, besides keeping up the work for 
two years, and the local Association is under 

[ 213 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

obligations to pay its debts as soon as it can. 
Tliis, in some measure, is a small token of the 
devotion of this people to Lithia Springs, and 
under discouraging circumstances at that; be- 
cause this local organization somehow failed at 
the start to get the confidence of the people. 



[ 214. ] 



XV 



What is Chautauqua? This cannot be an- 
swered in a sentence, nor on several pages. 
Chautauqua is in some respects what the people 
make it. It is, briefly stated, an educational 
institution at a summer resort home under some 
positive religious auspices, where people of all 
sects and no sect, — those with church homes 
and of no church home, — dwell together and 
unite to help bring the Kingdom of God into 
each other's hearts and homes, and learn to make 
the most of themselves and their opportunities, 
forgetting diff^erences in the endeavor to uplift 
and enoble all work. It is a bit of heaven on 
earth, a foretaste of the millennium, where all 
dwell together in unity and singleness of pur- 
pose, a vacation, social, restful, recreative, in- 
structive, all with the best moral and religious 
influences. Time is counted by the Chautauqua 
meeting and outing, and whole families, and 
whole neighborhoods even, look forward to it 
each year as little children do to Christmas, as 
a wholesome, social, happy, joyous, earnest and 

[ 215 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

instructive coming together. Think, then, what 
Chautauqua means to a hard-working commu- 
nity of farmers, for Lithia Springs is essen- 
tially a farmer's Chautauqua, and their families 
and others who badly need this vacation and 
change of work. Many who help in the schools 
and on the program make this their vacation 
time, giving their services. For instance, the 
orchestra that has served us so acceptably, has 
almost entirely given its services in this way for 
years, the members taking this as an outing 
time from regular employment. The employes 
and helpers on the grounds also join in the feel- 
ing of gladness and fraternity, young people 
and old, school-teachers and hired help in the 
farming communities, coming for miles to help 
in getting ready, many working in this way for 
season tickets for themselves and families. Sev- 
eral hundred tickets have thus been secured in 
one season. 

Chautauqua is also a place where, by coming 
in touch with the great souls of earth, many are 
quickened to higher life. Chautauqua is reli- 
gion with a practical emphasis, and liberty with 
a religious emphasis. Poor people and rich peo- 
ple will mingle at Chautauqua who hardly ever 
meet in church. Country men and towns' peo- 

[ 216 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

pie, — people from various sections in this and 
other lands will meet on a common footing. In 
this way the gospel is preached to thousands 
whom the churches do not reach. 

This whole effort at Lithia Springs has 
meant for me " more and better work for the 
Kingdom of God " with these two mottoes flung 
in the breeze: " No North, no South, no East, 
no West, but one grand Union, and one Flag." 
" In the love of truth and in the spirit of Jesus 
Christ we unite for the worship of God and the 
service of man." 

Booker T. Washington, the great mental and 
spiritual emancipator of his race, on the occa- 
sion of his last visit to us (1903) very kindly 
said: 

" I am glad to return to Lithia Springs for 
the third time. I am always glad to come here. 
I am always glad to shake the hand of your 
leader. I have refused invitations to at least 
twenty-five Chautauquas this season, and this is 
the third and last one that I shall attend. I 
come to Lithia Springs because I believe in what 
you are doing and in the way you are do- 
ing it. Because you are strong for reality, 
simplicity, getting down to nature. I am glad 
to see your children get out where they can 
wade in the water, hear the songs of the birds 

[ 217 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

and live near nature. I was born in a log 
cabin, and I haven't felt so much at home for 
fifteen years as when Brother Douthit put me in 
that log cabin." 

But this great educator and benefactor of his 
race and all races did not tell it all. He came 
to Lithia to help us when he could have received 
very much more money from others. 

My fellow-townsman and friend for over 
forty years, Senator George D. Chafee, at Li- 
brary Chapel, October 15, 1904, gave this testi- 
mony : 

" Here under the shadow of these trees, in 
this happy little valley, around these bubbling 
springs, in this rude structure, — tabernacle 
they call it, — where nothing has been done for 
show, during the last dozen years have been 
gathered annually the very best and brightest 
men and women the world has known, and their 
sweetest and brightest thoughts have been ex- 
pressed for us who came to listen and leam. 

" Here was absolute freedom ; here was rest 
for the weary ; here was hope for the sorrowful ; 
here were pictures of a bright future; here 
reminiscent joys of the past. 

" I don't believe there ever was another ten 
acres in the world where so many great and good 
men and women met and gave such free expres- 

[ 218 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

sion to so many great and good thoughts in the 
same length of time. Religion, History, Ro- 
mance, Right Living, Higher Aims, Education, 
Music, Good Fellowship, — everything, except 
the sordid aim to accumulate money, here has its 
highest and best." 

Several things mark this Chautauqua as 
unique, notably : ( 1 ) It is probably the only 
Chautauqoia Assembly begun among farmers 
and in a rural district, miles from any village or 
city, (2) It was the first Chautauqua in the 
world, so far as I can learn, to invite and wel- 
come our Roman Catholic friends to equal priv- 
ileges on its platform and give them the making 
of the program for a day. — Also the colored 
people were given the program. (3) It is the 
only one, that I know of, which began as an 
anti-saloon crusade and encampment, but also 
gives each political party a day's program. 
(4) It is the only Chautauqua conducted under 
Unitarian auspices, and it should, therefore, be 
non-sectarian in spirit, principle and purpose, 
according to the traditions of the Chautauqua 
idea. (5) It was the first to give a day's pro- 
gram to the Congress of Religion, (6) It is 
the only Chautauqua on earth having a wealthy 

[ 219 ] 



\ 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

opposition only five miles distant, organized for 
commercial purposes under the name Chau- 
tauqua. 

Here has been virtually a parliament of re- 
ligions ; a church federation ; a convention for 
fair play to all ; a people's university ; a kinder- 
garten ; a school for good citizenship and social 
purity ; a school for Bible study ; a school for 
domestic science, health and good behavior; a 
conference of men and women to cultivate the 
art of making happy homes and of making 
the most of life, the best of each other and 
of everything the good God gives us. 

As the Lithia Springs Chautauqua has grown 
great changes have been wrought in the un- 
fenced woodland around Lithia. A small part 
has been cleared of underbrush and set in blue- 
grass, having a beautiful park-like effect. A 
driveway of several miles over the park 
(laid out by Prof. J. C. Blair, of our state 
University, and in process of construction 
though not completed for lack of means), gives 
a varied view along cultivated fields, through 
a pleasant, beautifully shaded meadow, with 
high bluffs near the creek, up deep glens, and 
through forest so dense that most of the view 
is of the blue sky above. Roads have been 

[ 220 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

worked, fences made, washouts filled up, bridges 
and embankments built. Hundreds of stumps 
of once majestic trees must be rooted up with 
dynamite so as to put the park of forty acres 
around the springs in trim for cottages, log 
cabins and tents. 

Early in the year 1902, the grounds were 
planned, nearly two hundred building lots 
platted, and arrangements made for leasing 
lots for a term of years, with restrictions 
giving the managers of the Chautauqua control 
as to proper use of the leased ground. 
Prices of leases were fixed at from ten to fifteen 
dollars per year, and several cottages were built 
the first season. There are now some twenty-five 
leased lots, with cottages varying from one hun- 
dred and fifty to eight hundred dollars or more 
in cost, post-office and headquarters building, 
grocery-store, dining-hall, kitchen and restau- 
rant, five-room cottage for manager, and Kin- 
dergarten Hall, making a total investment of 
some seventy-five hundred dollars made by indi- 
viduals. 

On the American Unitarian Association 
grounds for the use of the Chautauqua are four 
two-room cottages, nine cabins and two dormi- 
tories of six and eight rooms each, all bringing 

[ 221 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

an income, where rented, of about two hundred 
and fifty dollars at each annual assembly. Then 
there is the rustic Library Chapel, with its circu- 
lating library of nearly one thousand volumes, 
and of great value as a place for holding meet- 
ings and classes. This was finished in 1904 by 
funds placed in our hands by Mr. and Mrs. 
Henry Pickering of Boston. The dedication 
services were held Monday, August 22, 1904, 
Rev. Henry H. Barber preaching the sermon, 
and Rev. Fred V. Hawley making an address. 

The recent remodeling of the tabernacle, ice 
house, dam for swimming and boating pool, 
miscellaneous buildings, feed-yard for horses, 
etc., raises the total value of improvements on 
the grounds, private and belonging to the 
Association, for Chautauqua and missionary 
purposes, to over twenty thousand dollars. 

This, besides the necessary work of clearing, 
road-making, etc., which has resulted in no 
direct income, gives some idea of what has been 
accomplished in a material way, most of it in the 
face of the local opposition that has beset us 
since 1901. Besides the two hundred acres in- 
cluded I and members of my family hold ninety 
acres more, controlling it for Chautauqua pur- 
poses, thirty acres of which, bought by my son 

[ 222 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

and his wife, near the springs, had before 
been used as a harbor for evil-doers. All this 
should ultimately belong to the Chautauqua 
estate or be controlled in its interest. 

Here I am at the end of my story. It has 
taken more of work and time than I supposed. 
Spring is here. I have been in Shelbyville all 
winter preaching on Sunday, and preparing 
for Chautauqua other days. I long for the 
bright days to come when I can spend more 
time amid the healthful influences of the 
springs. I preach regularly in Shelbyville 
during the winter season, and for the summer 
I hold services regularly in Library Chapel. 

My son George lives near the springs and 
looks after the wants of the cottagers and other 
interests. He is postmaster of Lithia, which is 
a regular U. S. post-office for the summer 
season, and my grandson and namesake, Jas- 
per, is chief clerk. My son and family also 
help with Our Best Words, the monthly wings 
of the mission since 1880. Crowds of cot- 
tagers and visitors, camping and picnic par- 
ties, etc., are coming and going all summer, 
and often in winter. We still hold Fourth 
of July celebrations ; and the local Methodist 
churches last year inaugurated an annual basket 

[ 223 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 



meeting, to be held in June, which promises to 
be very largely attended. All these services, 
with the Assembly in August, keep the vacation 
filled with interesting work. 

I have dwelt at such length upon the work at 
Litliia Springs, because, as God gives me to see 
it, this is the most important visible result of this 
mission, and the nearest realization of my prayer 
through a half century, for good fellowship 
and co-operation among all people for right- 
eousness, temperance, peace and good-will to 
men. 

When, many years ago, Jenkin Lloyd Jones 
was Secretary of the Western Unitarian Con- 
ference, he once visited this mission in the 
muddy season. In his report of the visit he said 
that the American Unitarian Association had 
aimed an arrow at the state capitol and it had 
glanced off and stuck in the mud down in 
" Egypt." I do not know exactly what Brother 
Jones meant by that remark, but it is sugges- 
tive. It has been claimed by some that Uni- 
tarian Christianity is not so much for the 
" great plain people," — to use Lincoln's favor- 
ite phrase, — as for the highly cultured, and 
that missionary efforts should therefore be ex- 

[ 224 ] 



JASPER DOUTHIT'S STORY 

erted chiefly among the " influential, intellectual 
and scholarly," and at college towns and uni- 
versities. But the gospel I have felt called 
to preach for nearly fifty years is sent of God 
for all sorts, classes and conditions of people, 
especially the more needy and unfortunate of our 
Father's children. " In my early missionary 
work," said good Bishop Thoburn, " I made the 
mistake of fancying that if I could get hold of 
the influential part of the community, I could 
get hold of the masses. I found that tliis fancy 
was contrary to reason and history. Chris- 
tianity/ was founded hy beginning at the bot- 
tom." I did not realize this fact at the begin- 
ning of my ministry, but I did feel that I must 
begin where I was bom and work among the 
people with whom I was brought up. 

Here I have labored over forty-five years, 
mostly under the auspices of the American Uni- 
tarian Association, whose avowed object is " to 
diffuse the knowledge and promote the interests 
of pure Christianity." This has, indeed, been 
my desire and purpose since the time I began 
to worship and work with the First Methodist 
Church, Shelby ville, Illinois, in 1854, until now. 

I have tried in these pages to give a simple, 
plain story of my life-experience, with the 
earnest prayer that it may help others to do 
more and better work than I have done for the 
Kingdom of God on earth. 

[ 225 ] 



DEC 7 1909 



